


Shadow Spark

by Casjuice, suddenlyserket



Series: Shadow Spark Series (creative, right?) [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (if spoilery), Abusive John Winchester, Action/Adventure, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Blood and Gore, Cas is a BAMF, Dean is a BAMF, Demons aren't like the ones in Supernatural, Eventual Romance, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Hurt and comfort, M/M, Mild fantasy elements, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, References to Drugs, Sad Backstories, Superhero Castiel, Superhero Dean, Violence, Wing Kink, breakdowns, but only between Dean and Cas, developing destiel, gangs (sorta?), mentioned self harm, superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casjuice/pseuds/Casjuice, https://archiveofourown.org/users/suddenlyserket/pseuds/suddenlyserket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Satellite City is a haven for crime; lowlifes swarm in every dark corner, newspaper headlines scream bloody murder in every issue, the Angel and Demon gangs declare a new war every night.</p><p>But its civilians aren't without a saviour or two.</p><p>Castiel Novak; journalist by day, winged lightning-bolt shooting hero by night, is the Satellite city's guardian angel;</p><p>But what happens when another hero, Castiel's damn near polar opposite, is thrown in the mix?</p><p>((ON INDEFINITE HIATUS: I'm not so into supernatural anymore and i'm busy as heck with art/uni, so i don't know when i'll be in the mood to write this again. read at your own risk))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Encounter (Castiel)

Night in the city.

Castiel had a sort of love-hate relationship with it.

When the sun started to set, he would get home from his dull journalism job; take a few minutes to rifle through police scanners hard-wired into his electro-sensitive brain and put his metaphorical work boots on. The cheap suit and glasses would be tossed aside, stretching black wings puffed out and his costume shrugged on. White shirt, blue tie, black suit, trench coat, blue mask. 

The Soldier of Heaven.

And no, he hadn’t come up with that title; blame it on an excitable Christian reporter.

Then out his window he would fly; today towards one of Satellite City’s lesser banks. A robbery, apparently. Inexperienced crooks attempting some sort of heist. Child’s play.  
However, looking down at the streets below, Castiel found he wasn’t going to be tackling it alone.

For a brief moment, he caught the shape of a young man; clothed in black and gliding without effort over the side walk; damn near dancing over it in the moonlight. 

He disappeared before Castiel could figure out who he was.

Odd.

But no matter; at least it was a simple enough job; none of the big dogs were linked to this one.

No Angels or Demons.

Angels.

Castiel shook unwelcome memories from his train of thought with a strong beat of his wings. This effort to focus drew him closer to the centre of the action; police were on the way, but had yet to reach the scene. Good; they only ever got in the way with their egos and guns.

He landed and sent an electromagnetic pulse through the ground. The cement hummed, almost crackling underfoot with the blast. On cue, the lights all swapped places with the dark. 

The power outage paved Castiel's entrance, and he gladly took centre stage; bursting through glass panelled doors with wings outstretched and eyes ablaze with lightning; powerful, electric blue. It was an after effect of the pulse, but a convenient and pleasantly intimidating one. The criminals were frozen in place.

Easy pickings.

As Castiel stepped further in, the veil of dark lifted with the sparks leaping from his eyes, revealing for no longer than a second the shadowy man from before. He dissolved, completely, utterly; slipping into something halfway between a wisp of smoke and a blurred shadow. But he wasn't dissolved for long; phasing back into sight as he murmured phrases of Latin in a double toned whisper; long, delicately spiralled horns slipped seamlessly from the top of his skull. The words had summoned them.

Holy...

Unphased by his transformation or Castiel's presence, the man charged at crook number one, flipping him head over heels with an animal but graceful and deft bucking of his head. 

The criminal smacked hard into the floorboards and the hero kicked away is gun, pinning him to the ground with a curved, scabbard like bone snapped off his arm. 

Impressive.

Castiel sidestepped through the air; the hero caught the flap of his wings and turned with a flick of his elegantly horned head. In turning, he missed the glint of moonlight on lackey number two’s knife which was heading straight for his neck. 

Castiel didn’t miss it. 

With a crack like a whip, he threw a bolt at the attacker, neatly over horned hero’s shoulder. The bolt hit its mark and zapped the consciousness right out of the criminal. But it had an adverse effect in passing. Its flash of blue light seemed to knock the horned hero out of the air, broken glass crunching under his weight before he vanished again.

Gone as though his power cable had been yanked out.

Who the hell was he?

Wait.

No;

Not the Black Impala

Not the mysterious vigilante famed for rescuing a fleet of subway workers when the tunnels collapsed in Rockerville; not the devil-like shadow who took down the Mafia in Acer Valley ; Couldn't be.

Had to be.

Well then.

Police sirens stopped the train of thought straight in its tracks; the law closing in; telling Cas through their approaching wails that his shift was over.

So out the door he flew; and he fully intended to keep on flying too; but he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

The Black Impala curled up at the base of a tree.

Not just curled up- flickering?

Castiel dropped out of the sky and ran over to the other’s side without hesitation, body lighting up so he could see what was happening.

“Are you alright?” Castiel kneeled next to the Black Impala, who was well and truly solid now, a grimace saying loud and clear that he was also well and truly hurt.

Impala hissed something under his breath before spitting a mouthful of blood at the grass. Definitely /at/ the grass; there was a sort of violence in the action. When he looked up, his eyes were black and cold, expression bitter.

“I’ll live; no thanks to you” His voice was equally as venomous as the rest of him. Castiel couldn’t help but flinch back a little.

Impala made an attempt at standing, stopping half way and curling back in on himself- voice breaking as he swore at the hurt. 

Castiel wasn’t about to hold a grudge against him for his rudeness; hurt animals tended to growl, after all. Biting his lip, Castiel stretched out his arm and gripped the Impala’s shoulder tightly, enveloping him for a few moments in a bright white light. A halo, if you will.

The light dipped away and the Impala loosened; the Soldier of Heaven could do more than fly and zap people. Though this particular healing ability wasn't one he wanted to add to his official profile.

“Sorry-“ Castiel stood up, spreading his wings out behind him, ready to catch the breeze, “Don’t tell anyone about that power.” 

The Impala rose from the foetal position, brow meshed in confusion instead of pain. He looked as though he was about to speak, but Castiel beat his wings down before he could get the chance.

Consequentially, the Impala’s utterance of “Prick” was heard only by demons chattering in his ears and the wind that whistled on by.


	2. Accident (Dean)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean Winchester, or the Black Impala, has worked with the Soldier of Heaven (or rather "Sparky" because Dean thinks "Soldier of Heaven" is pretentious at best) once, and he doesn't intend to do it again. But circumstances may force him to go against his intentions.

When the Black Impala slipped back into his shared apartment and back into his daytime identity as “Dean Winchester”, he was tired and generally unhappy.

This, however, described him perfectly on just about any given night.

He screwed up his suit and locked it in its heavy duty hex box before wandering out of his room and into his younger brother’s; dragging his feet, slack. 

Let us repeat for emphasis; tired and generally unhappy.

Sam Winchester, four years Dean’s junior (leaving him at the ripe old age of 17), was sleeping with his face glued to an open text book. 

“Typical.” Dean shook his head and smiled lightly as he swapped the typed pages for a pillow and threw a blanket over his brother. Sam was going to be great when he grew up; he wanted to be lawyer; he certainly had the brain for it. Straight As across all subjects, near perfect test scores; he had a fuck tonne of potential that a crappy childhood hadn’t damaged. And that was so much more than could be said for Dean. It was too late for him to do much with his life beyond saving the odd civilian and making sure Sam had the funds to go to Stanford when the time came.

But Dean was happy with that. 

He collapsed into bed and closed his eyes, demons snarling and filling his ears with their acrid voices as he fell asleep; the shadow of wings etched on his eyelids.  
His last waking thoughts could be summarised as such; “Soldier of heaven- what a prissy name…”

And his first thoughts upon waking, amongst the blur of nightmares, were “Shit, I’m going to lose my job.”

The clock read 7am and his shift started in exactly 45 minutes. 

“Fuuuck” He staggered out of bed and into his work clothes, grabbing his toolkit before dashing out the front door as fast as possible. He needed to keep this job, but this would be the sixth consecutive late day this week, and Rufus was not the most understanding person at the best of times. 

Unfortunately for Dean, this was anything but the best of times.

-

\- An optimistic thought; he could still, potentially make it.- 

-

But forget that; some asshole wasn’t watching where they were going, resulting on Dean dropping his toolkit and having to scramble after its contents on the crowded street.

The prick even had the nerve to speak to him.

“Watch where you’re fucking going you son of a-“ Dean was burning with a mixture of anxiety and anger when he looked up at the jerk who’d knocked him over; but his fruity retort was deftly plucked from his mouth when he saw who exactly had just lost him his job.

Only one person had eyes that blue.

Dark and electric like lightning striking the sea.

/Sparky?/

The Soldier of fucking Heaven was standing over Dean Winchester looking scrawny and frightened; vaguely reminiscent of a deer in the headlights. Dean’s staring didn’t help to remedy this condition.

So he staggered away, scared off by Dean’s sailor talk. 

/Good riddance/

Shaking the shock out with a rattle of his head, Dean sprinted to the bus stop; literally as fast as he could possibly run. But alas, the universe is a douchebag and he didn’t get there in time, the back of the bus mocking him as it grew smaller and smaller.

His demons were in absolute hysterics.

Dean couldn’t stop himself screaming the Latin equivalent of “Shut the fuck up.”

An old woman across the street shot him a judging, contemptuous look.

He did not hesitate to flip the bird at her.

Dean had probably just lost the only decent job he’d ever had; his only real hope of earning enough money to send Sam to the college he needed to go to. 

Forget probably, definitely.

Yes, definitely.

He collapsed, defeated, onto the cold bus stop bench; rubbing his temples and rattling off swear words and self-directed loathing under his breath. What the hell was he going to do now? How would he break this to Sam? How the hell was he going to tell his brother that he couldn’t go to college anymore because Dean couldn’t get his loathsome ass to work on time?

It was hard to keep tears at bay, but Dean could do it; he had a lifetime of experience.

But fuck it was hard.

He climbed onto the next bus with stinging eyes and rode it slowly towards Rufus’ wrath.

And Christ alive, it was /mighty/

Rufus gave him /hell/ when he turned up; this of course was something Dean was used to; he could thank his dad for that. It was probably the only reason he didn’t a) cry or b) run away. So despite Rufus’s promise that this was his last shift, the guy still paid him for it in salute of his tough composure.

A composure which was on the brink of breaking; riddled with cracks but somehow still holding together.

Dean doubted it could last all the way home.

But apparently, it didn’t have to.

He was sitting on the bus and he spotted a teenager with one of Satellite city’s biggest newspaper companies plastered on the back of his shirt; and he was sticking up flyers.  
-  
“PHOTOGRAPHERS DESPERATELY NEEDED for the ORBIT POST”  
-  
Photographers? Dean could probably do that. 

Correction, hell yeah he could do that.

He tore a flyer when he walked past- he called the number straight up and said without a second thought that he would come in tomorrow- they seemed bored until he mentioned that he had photos of the Black Impala.

Which was of course, more than partially untrue; he didn’t even have a camera. But that could be arranged.

One pay check later, Dean had the best camera he could afford and he built his portfolio.

He spent the whole afternoon in dark spaces in his suit; enduring the demon chatter and trying to take photos at the same time.

When he got home he was exhausted; the work hadn’t been fruitless, he had heaps of good photos; but it was draining. Dean was itching to sleep it off, well, sleep it off as much as his demons would let him. Nightmares constricted his ability to rest.

Not that they got the chance to.

The buzz of his demon’s whispers rose to a thrum, their voices shouting and croaking and screaming; blocking out the world.

He could make out their words when his body started to go cold; heat seeping out of his blood and deep into the floor boards, leaving him cold. Empty. Ready.

The room blurred- warped- darkened. Instinct told him to call for help, try and fight the wave; experience told him to lie down and let it wash over.

/Come on./

/Throw it at me./

Pain.

Like a powerdrill through the back of his head.

Black.

And then the visions; a series of images.

Frederick avenue hospital.

A woman with dark hair and a smile full of poison.

Shrill screams grating through disinfectant soaked air.

Gunfire and flashes of lightning; bright and loud.

Blood running like a red ribbon between limp, dark wings.

Back to black.

And the pain, withdrawing with the powerdrill; slowly, sharply; leaving a sensual hole in his skull.

When Dean opened his eyes, he was sprawled on the floor, coughing up his lungs and shivering in a thick, cold sweat. He rifled through the pictures seared onto his eyelids, putting them together like pieces of a puzzle. 

The Demons were making a move at the hospital; and it was not going to end well for Sparky.


	3. Red and white (Dean)

The stench of disinfectant was never going to be something Dean could get used to.

Never.

He couldn’t stop the nausea it forced on him when he slipped through the hospital ventilation shafts, couldn’t black out the painful memories it dredged up with its sour, clinical reek. He couldn’t stop his skin crawling.

But he’d deal with it like he dealt with everything.

Focus, Dean, focus.

He wound through the labyrinthine system of sterile steel ducts, listening carefully and quietly for signs of panic; screams, hurried footsteps, crashes. The sounds of humans with adrenaline coursing through their bloodstreams.

The first sound didn’t take long to breach- the shattering of glass breaking through the silence as a sharks fin slices through water; a sign of something bigger, nastier. He zeroed in on it, drifting in the duct above a long, brightly lit hall when the scream hit him. The shrill, sledgehammer of a shriek from his premonition. Scrambled footsteps, laughter that spurted and oozed in smooth, cruel waves- a gust of wind and Meg was right under the duct, dark hair echoing ebony under the harsh light, pale skin painfully white against its rich dark. 

The way she was standing said she was there for a reason, she had something important to do- to find. 

Her toxic smile said however, she wasn’t afraid to delay for a bit of fun.

Dean wanted to drop down and snap her pretty little neck, but the bleaching lights meant he couldn’t do shit; Meg may as well be wearing Kevlar armour in a concrete bunker. 

He needed to turn them off.

It seemed however, that he wouldn't have to.

There was deep rumble, a static thrum. The corridor went pitch black.

Save for two electric blue fireballs of light.

The Soldier of Heaven was making his dramatic entrance.

He seemed to love those.

So much so, in fact, that Meg had taken the opportunity to vanish.

Dean smoked into the air, seeing everything crystal clear despite the absence of light. His nerves reached around, the demon voices whirred in his ears. He saw Sparky’s raven wings flared out to either side, almost blurring into the dark themselves; he was barking into nearby wards, urging patients that could go to go or to carry those who couldn’t move on their own.

Without materialising, Dean helped too; silently guiding the hostages through the dark hall. Nudging them in the right direction, helping those who couldn’t quite carry themselves move a little faster, pushing along drips. Anything he could do he did- but he was getting this sick feeling in the pit of his gut; where had Meg gone?

Answer?

Through the rest of the goddamn hospital to sneak up on them. 

In the blink of an eye, she blitzed through the escaping hostages, knocking them over, tearing up more shocked screams and gasps. She was insanely fast, shooting straight through the crowd like a missile.

Her target was Sparky.

Dean had to act fast.

He willed himself through the dark as fast as possible, hot on Meg’s heels. It was terrifying to streak that fast through the air, ripping past the shadow and straining to reach ahead. 

They were behind Sparky before he could turn to look; the angel’s body lit with electricity in defensive reflex, Meg’s gun pressed cold and deadly against his neck.

Dean hurled himself at Sparky, crashing into him at damn near warp speed and throwing him out of the way before Meg had the chance to press the trigger. 

The gunshot crashed through the air as Dean rolled off the hero and into a wall, form burning from touching Sparky’s electrified body. His heart was having trouble beating, muscles in a spasm at the rush of electricty.

No sooner had he collapsed, however, had Sparky grabbed his shoulder and drained the shock from his body, just like he had the night before.

Dean blinked bewilderment away before dissolving back out of sight, trying to pin Meg in his vision; that bitch could fucking move. 

Sparky’s head snapped back from a sharp blow and Dean saw Meg for an instant before she moved, eyes flashing towards the shadow he stood cloaked in. He’d gasped when she pummelled Sparky- but she couldn’t actually see him. Regardless, she charged. 

Bolted probably describes her more accurately, Meg doesn’t run, she shoots herself forward like a bullet.

With a couple spat words of Latin, horns spiralled out of Dean’s skull and arms; and he dodged her with grace, swinging his elbow at her as she passed. This failed to cue the blood splatter Dean wanted but rather a shower of dark hair; he’d sliced off half of her curly dark locks instead of slicing her throat.

Shit.

Meg laughed.

Dean’s demons were not amused by this blunder.

So they threw him from his hiding place just long enough for Meg to kick him down, dig her heels in his face and snap of his horns.

Dean /screamed/

He was blinded by the white hot pain; it hit him like a machine gun in the top of the skull; a ceaseless fire of stabbing, shattering hurt. Blood roared in his ears, demons snarled and hissed and mocked. 

Meg was off him, static electricity blasting past.

Not that Dean could really tell for the splitting feeling that kept tearing the screams from his throat. 

Hot wet slicked down his face and neck, it splattered around him, blood shooting from the shattered stumps relentlessly. He scrambled, trying to see through the screen of static fighting to silence himself. 

There were crashes behind him, the beats of wings, cracks of lightning. 

What little vision Dean had was blurring, filling with dark spots; his body draining with the spray of blood. His bones were turning to chalk, muscles to jelly. The pain kept striking through. 

He needed to get the suit off, to ramble out the incantation to break the bind; the bleeding would stop, so would the pain- but he could barely move yet alone speak. 

His arms gave way with his legs, the hard floor hurling itself towards him, its white painted crudely by the scarlet pouring out of him. He coughed out a cry, tasted rust on his tongue; curled in on himself like the wounded, dying animal he was.

Something cracked down on him.

Hands on his throat screamed that it wasn’t a good guy.

The masses around him were melded together; the night sky in the open window, the man crushing his chest and wringing his neck. A horrifying amoeba that was slipping away with his blood. 

A mellow voice rolled from pulsing amoeba, a harsh one spat back and a bright flash broke it apart. 

Dean coughed, wheezed, spluttered- throwing up his lungs, trying to remember how to breathe. The room spun around him, a crushed windpipe joining the barrage of hurt tying him to the ground.

Two bright circles- a hand on his shoulder.

His lungs hauled in the air, the room screeched to a halt, the pain muffled, half the blood sucked back in. Dean coughed out the incantation as fast as he lips would allow; scrambling to his feet before tearing off the mask and tugging off the suit entirely.

The bleed stopped and with it all the hurt.

It was like he’d just dug himself out of a grave. 

He leant against a wall, dragging in lungfuls of antiseptic soaked air one after the other after the other. He turned; seeing Sparky a few shades paler, eyes sunken and skin stretched as he walked forwards.

Dean met is gaze, catching his breath. Meg was gone, the other was further down the hallway, seizing as sparks rippled over his body. Dean had saved Sparky, but ultimately, it was Sparky who rescued his loathsome ass in the end, and seemingly at a cost. “Thanks” At this point Dean didn’t even care that he was standing there near naked, mask off in front of another super.

“Don’t.. .don’t mention it,” Sparky seemed shocked at Dean’s exposure, eyes wide as the electricity in them simmered down. “Here-“ He shed his coat and draped it over Dean’s shoulders, “You might need this to get home.”

And then he was gone, flying out the window with uneven strokes of his wings.

Dean tugged the warm, heavy material around his body, stuffing his suit into the coat pocket. Getting out on foot was going to be hard, what with police and media no doubt crowding around the building. The front door wasn’t an option.

Luckily, however, Dean knew how to climb.

He just wished he’d asked Sparky for a lift.


	4. Arguably a Serendipity (Castiel)

What had been sleep was disturbed.

Castiel's alarm was blaring and its tone cracked through his skull in quite a ferocious way. It of course, needed to as he was practically out cold. And much to Castiel’s displeasure, waking up was going to have to be essential today. 

He forced open his eyes, a task similar in the amount of effort required to picking up an anvil, and made an attempt at sitting up.

This resulted in a blurring of the vision, a pounding in the ears and a burning twist of nausea. Great. He leaned over the side of the bed, grabbing at his waste-paper bin and retching up half a stomach full of bile and blood.

He needed to stop using his healing power.

If he kept this up he’d find himself in the ICU.

Again.

He blinked blearily at his bookshelves and made the executive decision to go have a shower.

He washed off smears of blood from last night, some of the aches; the stink of antiseptic from his wings. He tried rubbing away bruises too; dark, slowly purpling ones from dive bombing his table the previous night; but they were bruises, not dirt. Further reminders of the negative aspects of healing. But in some ways, the good outweighed the bad. The Impala would have died last night if Cas hadn’t healed him, the kinds of injuries he’d sustained weren’t the kind that someone could grit their teeth through. Sure, the Impala was a rude jerk, but he was still a human being and one that shared a common passion with Castiel; he was glad to have saved him.

Climbing out of the shower and getting dressed, Castiel wondered idly about the Impala. It was always an interesting thing to mull over; the secret identities of other super heroes. What kind of life they lead, their jobs, hobbies, who their loved ones were. Castiel had seen Impala without his suit, but all that meant was he could recognise the guy’s face (and, ahem, the rest of his body). He lived in town, that Castiel knew from their collision the previous morning, but the rest was a mystery. And the chances of running into him outside of the hero context were close to none.

With a grunt, Castiel crushed his wings into the back of his suit, feathers deflating, supple bones curving to fit the shape of his back. They were cramped, sure, but it worked. 

After skulling two bitter cups of coffee, Castiel left for work.

Cold autumn air tainted with car exhaust reddened his paled cheeks, passers-by beetled like ants on either side, traffic crawled along the crowded grey roads; Satellite city moving on as it did every morning.

Castiel stepped from the chill, crowded outside to the warm crowded inside of The Orbit Post, greeting the secretary as he dragged himself through the foyer with false chipperness. He made himself another cup of coffee in the break room before trudging over to his desk, opening up his half written article on the Black Impala.

Just a little expose on who he was (as far as the world knew so far), what he could do and what exactly he had done; all facts, a bit of dramatization; nothing personal. It was proving a bit hard to keep that last aspect in check. Castiel rubbed at his temples, typing up another snappy paragraph, it was for the paper tomorrow so he really needed to get it done. It still needed a photo.

He drained the last of his coffee and hunched forward as he typed, prodding thick rimmed glasses he didn’t actually need up the bridge of his nose. And yes, Castiel did get a bit of disguise inspiration from Superman, but hey, whatever works. 

He could over hear the boss talking enthusiastically in another part of the office; that was his hand-shaking voice. Maybe he’d employed that photographer they needed. Good.

“Going on a coffee run, want to join me?” A chipper voice piped up from behind Castiel.

It was Kevin, one of the paper’s newest employees; he was a bright kid and fun to talk to, “You kinda look like you’re running on fumes there.”

Cas smiled, “You have no idea-“ Kevin was squinting at the article,“Oh- that’s the expose on that new hero that the boss was chasing after me about yesterday.”

“Jealous- I never get to write about supers; did you hear about what went down at the hospital last night?” Cas got up and walked with Kevin to the break room, leaning against the counter as Kevin loaded up the expresso machine, “Soldier of Heaven and Black Impala on the same case.”

“Really?” Cas rose his eyebrows, he’d have to be careful about how much he said here, he had no clue just how much the news had covered, “Know why?”

“One of the Demons was trying to steal something, I think; it got messy,” Kevin had to speak up over the machine, “The supers got all the patients out safe, but apparently Impala got his ass handed to him in the process; horns snapped off, they found his blood everywhere.” The expresso machine beeped and Kevin took Castiel’s cup, “Lucky for him they couldn’t get much out of it, it turned into this weird black shit when they tried testing it- crazy right?” 

“Right-“, That certainly was bizarre, but considering what Impala could do Cas wasn’t that surprised, he took his now full cup from Kevin, “Thanks- I’ll have to search up what happened; I’ll probably have to write about it.”

They started walking out the room, “Oh, speaking of, did you hear about the new photographer they hired?” 

“No- what about him?”

“He’s got photos of the Black Impala- like really good ones,” Kevin sipped his coffee, “None of that blurry shit in the other papers, this guy actually managed to catch him on camera.” Kevin went around the corner,peeping over the wall of his cubicle when he got there, “Anyone who can do that must be amazing.”

“I’ll have to get one off him for my article,” Cas sat back down when Kevin dropped back behind the wall, taking a good drag of his scalding expresso. In doing so, he didn’t notice the man walking towards him; which was a good thing, because if he did, he would have spat that coffee all over his computer monitor at the speed of light.

“Hey, are you Cassy Novak?” 

“It’s Castiel, but yeah?” Castiel swallowed his coffee and swivelled his chair around. It’s a credit to Castiel’s self control that he didn’t say ‘mother-fucker’ and drop his coffee mug in shock.

The Black Impala was standing awkwardly in front of him; decked out as his daytime identity, complete with cheap suit and a bulky camera hanging heavily over his neck. His expression was comparable to that of someone who’d just found a hippopotamus in their living room. The facial representation of ‘what the actual fuck how the fuck did that happen'

Castiel’s was about the same.

Impala broke the silence. Thank god. He thrusted his fist forward a bit harder than could pass for a casual gesture, in it a usb. “Take it- uhh-" He looked away briefly and scratched at the back of his neck, "Impala photos.”

“Okay-“ Bewildered, Cas stuck out a hand and Impala dropped the usb. Both of them were starting to go red in the face. Cas had an infinity of questions, number one being ‘what the hell are you doing here’, but the shock kind of messed with his ability to articulate.

A common condition it seemed, all the Impala could huff out was a stilted “Talk out front after work” before marching off with great determination in the opposite direction.

“Right-“ Castiel turned back to his article slowly, looking as shell shocked as ever despite the walking dead style colour palette his tiredness had provided him with. He sat in silence, processing what had just happened. 

Kevin peeked over the barrier between their desks, curious as always,"What was up with that guy?"

Cas raised his eyebrows and exhaled slowly, "No clue," Castiel lied, "Newbie jitters I think." 

This was going to be... interesting.


	5. Fits and Familiarity (Castiel)

The work day went by quickly and it wasn’t long before Castiel was waiting stiffly by the Orbit’s entrance. He resembled, in many ways, a cardboard cut-out standee. Kind of flat, unmoving, bored. Perhaps slightly startled.

He didn’t know when Impala finished, but assumed it wasn’t long after him. 

Castiel stared out into the street, breaking the cardboard illusion a little bit by shifting his weight between legs and checking his watch. 

He sighed.

There certainly were a lot of exciting prospects of befriending another super, but a lot of dangers too. Hell, maybe they’d become a tag team. 

Cas scoffed.

Like that would ever happen. The Impala was a decent hero, sure; he had powers to make any villain quake in their boots and was ready to jump into the line of fire to save other good guys; but, from Castiel’s experience, he didn’t exactly fit the description of a good team player.

To be completely honest, Castiel only really wanted to meet up with him so he could his coat back.

Well, at least that’s what Cas insisted internally; and ofr the most part is was true. But there were other little factors that sweetened the pot for him. Though of course, he would never admit to any of them.

Castiel checked his watch again, only to be interrupted by the swish of the Orbit Post’s automatic doors as they released the Impala into the open; looking around for Castiel, it appeared.

The Impala redirected his footsteps when he caught Castiel's stare.

Castiel started walking, Impala catching up pretty quickly, still unspeaking, just following.They walked quietly to the base of the stairs. The silence between them thick despite the sound of city life rifling on around them.

“I haven’t told anyone,” It was the only way Cas figured he could start conversation, “I take it that goes for you to?”

“Right- yeah, of course-“ Dean’s voice was a bit stilted as he tugged at his collar, expression a tiny bit out of it before he shook his head and looked over at him and offered hand to shake, “I’m Dean, by the way, Dean Winchester”

“Castiel Novak” Castiel took Dean’s hand and shook it firmly, he decided he may as well get straight to the point “Uh, you have something of mine?”

“Mm?” 

Castiel raised his eyebrows at him, “My coat?”

“Oh- sorry, right; my place isn’t far if you needed it tonight,” He flicked his head to one side, short hair catching the sunlight with the subtle tic. Castiel nodded and followed Dean’s lead. 

At the end of the first block, silence had set in. Dean broke it. “Thanks, by the way, for what you did last night,” They strolled past the rush hour traffic, past the revving heat of dozens of cars, “You saved my life.” Dean Winchester rippled the gently smoked air with a soft chuckle, “As you can probably tell, my powers have a tendency to suck ass at the worst of times.”

Castiel let the ripple echo in his throat, “I can sympathise with that,” Castiel cast his eyes at Dean briefly, catching his smile, “Mine do too at times.” 

They stood patiently at the crossing, waiting for the lights to change. 

Castiel shuffled a bit on his feet, squinting slightly as his wings, crumpled up behind him, protested their situation with a dull ache. “For example, my wings are absolutely /killing me/ right now.”

“Fun,” Cas felt Dean running his eyes over Castiel’s back, trying to spot abnormal shapes under the plain black suit, “How the hell do you fit them in there anyway? Cuz whatever you do, you do it extremely well.”

The green man flashed and they resumed their walking, “Thank you- and the answer to your question is practice,” He puffed out a breath that turned to mist, dragon-like, “Years and years of practice.” Castiel chuckled to himself, “Although, no matter how hard I try, I’ve never been able to stop feathers dropping out,” He looked over at Dean with a smile, “It gets awful embarrassing when people start finding them around me.”

“Really?” Dean said brightly, “I’ll have to keep an eye out for them.”

They turned off into another street, a bit thinner than the last with a quieter road. Castiel suspected they were getting very close to wherever it was Dean lived. 

“Question;”The humour in Dean’s tone slipped a bit, “You’re writing an article about Black Impala, right?”

Castiel nodded, unsure what Dean was going to ask him, “Yes, that’s correct.”

There was a slight hesitation, “What did you find out?

“Not a great deal, info on you is sparse,” They turned down another side street, starting to climb a set of aged steel stairs, “And I had to keep opinion and experience out of it to avoid arousing suspicion, too, so even less detail on that field.” 

A relieved exhale, or at least that’s what it sounded like. “So, nothing… about how it is I do what I do?” Another question hung on that sentence, invisible fruit waiting to fall.

“Nothing beyond what everyone else already knows,” Castiel assured, loosening his tie a bit as they continued climbing, “Like I know your powers let you sort of become shadow and move freely in it, and I know you meld with your suit which-“ Castiel turned to Dean, “-is why I didn’t freak out when you started bleeding rivers after Meg snapped off your horns.”

“Yeah, not my proudest moment” Dean started picking through his pockets in search of keys.

“And the lead up wasn’t exactly mine, either, I put you in that situation,” Ascension ceased on the fourth floor up, “You lost control somehow, I don’t know why and I won’t pry, it isn’t my business,” Castiel followed Dean to a door layered with security mesh and locks, “All heroes have their secrets; like the one I showed you last night.”

“I wish my secrets could heal people…” It wasn’t exactly addressed at Castiel, it leant more towards absent resentfulness as Dean slipped the key into the heavy lock, “Anyway, we should stop the super talk now, Sam might be home and he doesn’t know;” He turned the key, a series of heavy clunks following the action, “And I fully intend to keep it that way.”

“Understood,” Castiel was always careful with hero related topics around others, though he was curious as to who this Sam was. A simple room-mate would be peculiar, most supers leant towards isolation wherever they could bear it; The most logical explanation was a lover, but Castiel wouldn’t jump to any conclusions. “Is Sam a friend of yours?”

“My little brother.” Oh, so Cas was completely wrong then. Family wasn’t something he’d seen coming.

“Well, I say little…” Dean sighed as he flicked on the lights, revealing a cluttered space tha’t composition practically reeked life, “There’s a four year age gap but he /towers/ over me like a goddamned sasquatch.” He waved his hand at a sofa that looked like its springs had called it a quits eons ago, “Make yourself at home, It might take me a while to find your coat; I wasn’t exactly alert last night so the fucker could be anywhere.”

Castiel took the invitation and sank into couch, he was right about the springs. “It’s fine, I’m happy to wait.” He laid back, tempted to close his eyes but finding the details of the apartment far too interesting. It was the kind that had lived many lives before Dean, rented out millions of times over its not quite determinable lifespan. Hardwood floorboards were dull from life times of dragged chairs and tables, carpets were cheap and new, obvious replacements of frayed predecessors; furniture was mismatched, bought second hand. 

From these details Castiel learnt a lot about Dean Winchester; he learnt that Dean was the kind of person who only ever rarely found himself with cash to spare, aesthetics sacrificed for sturdiness in every piece of furniture in the room. He probably had difficulty finding jobs, but the harsh budgeting in house dressing revealed he needed one more than most; he was saving for something.

Saving for something for someone?

/Oh./

Sam. 

Sam was in high school.

Sam wanted to go to college.

Dean was saving for his brother.

This shone a very different light on the man: Rudeness explained by stress over commitment rather than a simple bad temper or dick-wad attitude. 

Dean suddenly seemed a much nicer person, Castiel felt a bit of respect for him even. 

“A-ha!” there was a series of shuffling noises that interrupted Castiel’s train of thought, “Gotcha!” Turning to the sound, Castiel saw Dean waving the coat triumphantly above his head like some kind of heavy beige flag.

A weight Castiel hadn’t even realised was on his chest lifted as Castiel practically jumped up to take his coat, fingertips singing at the cool texture and familiarity of the garment. He held it tight in his arms, almost hugging it, “Thank you,” a soft smile glimmered on his lips. 

He held the coat and felt the memory tied to it with a fine, unbreakable chain.

Rain on his skin for the first time in an age.

Eyes gazing up at a swollen sky as wings hurled him into it.

The coat a shield over his body, curled over his shoulders as lightning tumbled on either side.

The day he escaped the hell that had been his home for years, the day he’d tried to forget it all. That he’d started a new life.

Long story short, the coat meant a lot and Castiel was elated to have it back.

“There might be a bit of blood around the collar, sorry.”

Castiel shook his head, like he cared about a bit of blood, god only knows how many times he’d scrubbed scarlet from its folds, ”It’s fine, nothing I can’t get out with a bit of cold water.” 

“Speaking of…” The other had strayed into what seemed to be the kitchen, the soft seal of a fridge hissing when it was opened, “Want one?” Dean presented two beers.

“I’d love one, actually,” Castiel took the cool bottle without hesitation, condensation dripping over the brown glass neck. Castiel hadn’t had any kind of alcohol for ages, considering how stressful last night was, getting just a tiny bit tipsy could do him a world of good.

Such appeared to be the case for Dean as well, popping the cap and taking a deep swig before leaning against the counter, looking idly around the room as he sighed. Castiel followed suit, tongue tingling with the dry fizz and bittersweet taste. 

“Hey-“ Dean plucked a note off the fridge door, raising his eyebrows before looking back up at Castiel, flicking the note around for him to see, “My nerd brother’s at a party tonight, so you can let your wings air-out if you want.”

“Really? Thank you,” Cas put down his beer with a gentle tap on the table, unbuttoning his suit and sliding it off, same for his shirt. His wings sprung out and stretched in the small room, feathers brushing the ceiling and table. He sighed, letting them droop down behind him, joints rejoicing at the freedom to move.

“Wow…” Dean was incredulous and it caught Castiel by surprise, “I keep forgetting how mother-fucking awesome your wings are.”

Castiel turned just that little bit pink, drawing the wings in self-consciously, no one had ever complimented them before, yet alone called them ‘mother-fucking awesome’. They certainly had never looked that amazing to Castiel, but he had gained them in unfortunate circumstances and that sort of ruined them for him. “Thank you,” He picked up the beer again, holding it close enough to his bare chest to feel its chill radiate onto his skin, “They’re a bit big but they come in handy for travelling.”

“I can imagine,” The Winchester sat down on the counter, bowlegs parted with the beer bottle planted in the space between them, “How long have you had them for?”

A few particles of dust caught the sunset’s orange light and hung in the air as Castiel tried to remember. They swirled there quietly and daintily. Castiel rifled through hazy memories tainted by anaesthetic and pain. 

“I think I was thirteen, or maybe fourteen,” He leaned back against the wall, taking a small sip of his beer, “Doesn’t matter, that was the general time.”

“Must have been hard,” Dean held the bottle loosely without making the effort to raise it to his lips.

“Yeah, hurt like a bitch.” Castiel knew Dean wasn’t picturing what had actually happened to him, the wings weren’t a natural occurrence. They hadn’t just grown on like Angel of the X-men’s had when he started going through puberty. He’d received them like Wolverine had his adamantium skeleton.

Through a long, inhumane and painful surgery.

Dean didn’t have to know that though.

“You’re not alone there,” Deans voice tugged Castiel back out of his recollections again, “It’s not fun being classified as a psychotic schizophrenic with… ideo… gah, what is it again?” He paused briefly, looking up at the ceiling in thought, “Right, ideopathic generalised epilepsy; a bit of a mouthful, ain't it?”

Interesting classification, Castiel wondered why exactly that was the case,“Well at least you don’t actually have any of those things,” Castiel sighed, taking a long draught of his cool beer.

“Maybe not, but I’ve got all the symptoms and had to take all the medication-” Dean picked up the beer, closing his legs over the cold spot it had made on the surface, looking out at the window with a frown, “- Combine that with high school douchebags and my drunk as fuck father and bam, a great childhood…”

“Yeah…” Castiel sighed, he hadn’t exactly had a conventional childhood. 

“Hmm…” Dean rubbed at his temples, brow furrowed and eyes screwed up with a grimace. He appeared to shiver. The next action was unexpected.

In perfect Latin, Dean Winchester said “Kindly shut the fuck up.”

“Huh?” 

Dean looked up, expression still pained, “Oh- that wasn’t directed at you;” Dean’s skin was going pale, as though the blood was being sucked out of him. “Oh are you serious-“ He leaned over, eyes screwing up again, “f-fuck-“

Something was wrong.

Castiel got up, rushing over to Dean and resting his hands over his shoulders comfortingly. He was as cold as ice. “Jesus-“ Cas was shocked by the chill, brow creased with concern, “Dean?” He shook gently, the other flinching, “Dean, are you alright?”

“No-“ His voice was loud, as though trying to speak over a crowd that wasn’t there. He slipped off the table and onto his feet, trying to push Cas away, “I’m about to-“ His voice was cut off by a sharp, short yelp, beer bottle shattering in his grip as he seized, dropping to the ground as though pushed harshly from above.

Cas caught him before he could hit the ground, the other convulsing violently, rusty froth bubbling from parted lips, eyes turned inky black. This must be the price of his power. 

Castiel lay him gently down, turning him to his side and pulling back his head to stop him choking on the bloody foam. Cas sat by him and rested the other’s head on his thigh as pillows were too far away. In his fit, Dean’s back was arched back, chest thrust forward; arms in spasm by his sides; legs were lax. And he was so impossibly cold, too cold. 

He looked possessed.

“Hey, shh…” Castiel was frightened, but forced himself to remain calm, to handle this as best he could, “Shh…”

Then it was over. Dean’s body went dead limp, black eyes flicking shut, breathing stopped before it spluttered back to life. Dean tried to sit up, coughing, choking on the froth in his mouth. Warmth was leaking back, but Dean still looked like a corpse. He winced.

Castiel used just a bit of his healing power to ease Dean’s pain, it was all he could really do. “Easy… Just take it easy, Dean.”

“Don’t-“ Dean’s voice was quiet and strained, “It doesn’t last…” He coughed, body jerking back and forth, he groaned. Castiel took one of his icy hands, cupping it in his warmth firmly, reassuringly. It was a small gesture, but he needed to help somehow. 

Dean’s other hand wiped froth from his lips but left a smear of blood in its place. He hissed and shivered violently. It was cut from the glass. Dripping red onto cream tiles.

“That looks like it hurts-“

“It's nothing..,” Dean clenched his fist and looked up at Cas, eyes still dazed, feverish, “Something’s about to happen down town; we need to stop it.”

Where did he get that from? Castiel cocked his head to one side, looking at Dean softly, “How do you know that?”

The sigh that left Dean wavered and scraped, “Visions; my fits are visions.” His eyes were bloodshot when he opened them again, “Demons are about to do something bad near that big copper serpent in Lawrence square.”

So Dean got premonitions, terrible premonitions.“I’ll go then,” Castiel looked at Dean earnestly, “You’re in no state to go anywhere near a fight, you need to rest.”

“No, I’m going.” He made an effort at sitting up, swaying a bit as he did, He gagged but swallowed it away, managing a stern look in Castiel’s direction, “I’ll be fine in a few minutes and I’m not letting you go alone.” He gulped again, “Crowley’s there.”

Crowley.

The infamous F. M. Crowley.

Drug lord, mass murderer and one of the three leaders of the demon gang.

Castiel couldn’t stop his eyes widening.

“Right- I’m on it.” Castiel got up, dressing and throwing on the coat. Whatever was going down he’d need to get there quick, before Crowley could kill anyone or worse. He puffed out his wings, tying on his mask and opening the window and letting the cold air rush between his feathers. 

He threw one last glance at Dean, felt one more pang of concern. He had gotten up, leaning against a wall to steady himself, looking like he was about to throw up all over everything. 

“I’ll meet you there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is slightly late, I realise; but hopefully a longer than average length sort of makes up for that.
> 
> Thank you to all the lovely folks reading this and sorry that I only update once a fortnight- but I'm so busy with school it's hard to find time to write this at all (grade eleven's a bitch) especially since I'm juggling other fics with this and all my assignments as well.
> 
> If you like this fic, please comment! I love hearing from you, I seriously live off comments and getting them encourages me to write (and no, I'm not just saying that). If there are typos or word mis-use, please please pleaaase tell me.


	6. Embrace of an ember (Dean)

When Castiel’s wings were just a speck obstructing the moonlight, Dean staggered into the bathroom and threw up the minimal contents of his stomach into the sink with an odd air of professionalism. He did, after all, have a lot of experience in the refined art of handling nausea; it was always the more urgent visions that left him feeling like this. 

He groaned, wiping his mouth before running into his bedroom. The room was still rocking and his blood ran cold as ice but he’d have to cope; lives were on the line.

Dean tugged his suit out of its hex box.

It hissed at him.

“While fuck you too, asshole, don’t blame me for what happened yesterday,” he muttered in Latin, stripping and tugging the suit on, “It’s your own goddamned fault for throwing me into the open.”

Bitterly, the suit stung his skin instead of sinking into it.

“Oh come on,” Dean tugged on the mask, “I’m gonna fight with Crowley, fucking Fergus McLeod Crowley; don’t you want me to do that?”

The suit mulled it over. The demons whispered as if debating.

Dean sighed when the suit finally melted into his skin and didn’t hesitate to hurl himself out into the dark, following Castiel’s example.

He tried not to think about what he was getting himself into; about whether he was really ready to go up against someone as powerful as Crowley. He’d be helpless on his own, but well, he wasn’t going to be alone. 

Sparky would be there.

There was a flash of lightning ahead of him.

Correction: Sparky was /already/ there and something was making him strut his stuff.

Crowley probably.

Dean’s throat tightened, adrenaline started to seep into his blood stream.

The night sky flared and split as a lightning bolt erupted into it; blinding white at the core, blue around the edges.

Dean closed in, circling over the source; a half built hotel.

Another bolt shattered past; its light knocked Dean out of the air for a split second.

He caught himself before a roof could be slammed into.

He melted back into the dark, excitement fizzed on demon tongues, bubbling in their voices

A window shattered; Dean saw a figure dangle out, glass glinting in his hair before being yanked back with a yelp.

Castiel.

“Having fun yet, feathers?”

Floorboards cracked under a sudden slamming weight.

“Tonnes, you bastard-“

Another bolt flashed, Dean dropped onto the fire escape.

He climbed swiftly into the unfinished building’s pipes, darting inside. Sounds of struggle yanked him harshly onwards.

He only had two things on his mind;

Saving Sparky’s feathery ass and kicking Crowley’s.

A fairly accomplishable check list, Dean thought (if perhaps a bit doubtfully).

He phased under the doorway and barely had any time to take in the battered space before a familiar trench coated angel was being hurled towards him with a blast of psychic energy so harsh it hit Dean even when he wasn’t solid.

Castiel slipped through him, briefly sharing the space he was taking up against a wall.

Crowley laughed at Castiel as he snapped his fingers, making Castiel fall in fast forward.

Dean, however, wasn’t caught in the swing of things this time. He bolted at Crowley, horns slipping out at his command- he was set to stab Crowley neatly from behind.

But Castiel got up and threw his lightning.

Dean materialised in the flash, Crowley’s bloodshot eyes flashed at him as the bolt stunned him; Castiel’s eyes followed suit

The criminal still managed a smirk as the lightning burnt through him.

Dean got the terrible feeling that Crowley had expected him to turn up.

No matter; an opportunity was an opportunity and Dean charged, slashing his claws hard over Crowley’s chest.

Blood splattered, Crowley roared and the Dean was somersaulting through the air.

His demons cheered, enjoying the show.

Castiel was thrown in a similar way through the door, knocking it off his hinges with a splitting crash.

As suddenly as the crash had split the air, lightning was filling it with static.

“NO!”

Dean was shocked by Castiel’s voice as it ripped out of him, damn near thunderous, spiked with a kind of deep seated fear.

Dean had no second thoughts as he leapt through the dark to reach him, ears catching the sounds of others amongst the whirring whispers filling his ears.  
More lightning whipped past, Dean smelt something burn, his feet hit the ground with a heavy crack.

“There you are.”

A smirk flashed on Crowley’s lips, he rose a hand and snapped his fingers.

Dean’s elbow shattered, arm broken clean in half.

Crowley laughed and the sound reached right through the flaring pain drew Dean in like a magnet; forcing him to charge forward, vision tinted red and arm shrieking as he did. For that second, it drove him mad, sending him hurtling towards Crowley horns first.

Dean smiled when he felt the blood splatter over his face as he skewered Crowley through the gut, wiping the smile from his face as he hauled his head up and flung Crowley across the room. A sadistic kind of elation stirred with the adrenaline in his blood, bubbling in a cocktail that stretched his lips to a sick grin for just a fraction of a second and glinted cold in inky eyes.

He flicked them feverishly over the room, the pain from his arm chiselled his bones and ripped out the joy. Crowley bled and writhed and swore. Dean clenched his fist so tight he feared his tendons might snap. He curled over with the pain, arm dangling by his side. His teeth dug so far into his lip that it broke and blossomed salty and metallic over his tongue. 

His body screamed at him to collapse and cradle the broken bones; Castiel’s screams were louder.

The lightning flashes came now with a heat. 

A light.

Laughter from others lurking in the building.

“Like your new cage, Clarence?” Dean recognised Meg’s voice instantly, the venomous silk, “Azazel made it ‘specially for you and your pretty raven wings.”

There was a yelp. Some voices Dean didn’t recognise.

One stood out amongst the others. It hissed and crackled like a flame.

“A little birdy told me that you didn’t grow those lovely things by yourself, is that true?” The voice rolled like smoke, it held the shape of sneering lips, “How about I do you a favour and burn them off?”

Burn them off.

“Fergus, why don’t you come in and join us?” The voice called out, angled in Dean’s direction,”Have you dealt with the other one yet?”

Crowley spluttered, still conscious, just. A tiny loop of psychic force tripped Dean over, a loud thump echoing through to the other room with a shriek of pain from Dean as his weight crashed down on his arm.

“Crowley?”

Dean hissed in pain, going into shadow form and trying to sit up as Meg darted into the room, right through where Dean was laying, the rapid clicking of her heels ricocheting through him like a spray of bullets. 

“Fuck!” She flicked her head, expression bordering on panic, thick, wavy dark hair swaying behind her like the nervous flick of a cat’s tail, “Yellow eyes Cro-“

Dean cut her off with a drag of his claws over her hip. She screamed in a beautiful mixture of pain, panic and rage; Dean slashed the back of her ankles, severing the tendons. She dropped and the pain swapped for agony.

Castiel screamed again, his voice replaced by the violent swings of scraping hacks.

The sounds tugged Dean like an invisible string, hauling him into the other room.

He was met by walls of white hot spiralling flame.

Castiel was wrapped in it in the corner of the room, cowering behind the swaying heat, wings folded as tight as they could do, body shrunken down, eyes closed tightly, sweat running over his body in a futile effort to keep it cool at the bars of his cage grew closer and tighter. 

A figure detached from the burning, a pyro-kinetic with swampy yellow eyes with twisted pupils and smears of dirt. His body was coated elegantly in swathes of blue and yellow fire; his hands were silver like ashes, his feet set the ground ablaze whenever they touched the floorboards. He walked towards Dean with a sick smile on his blazing skin.

Azazel. 

The ringleader.

“Let him go!” Stretched by his screaming arm, Dean’s voice was raw, breathless and choked by smoke.

“Why should I? I’m doing him a favour, aren’t I?” Azazel circled Dean, sliding over the ground like it was made of ice, a ring of flame followed him before Dean could even think to step away. “Plucking off the feathers that don’t even belong to him, I should do the same for you.”

Dean flicked out his claws, his horns got a fraction sharper.

“That suit isn’t a part of you, neither is the soot in your eyes, “ A chuckled slipped between his words like a tree crashing in a forest fire,“Maybe I should burn it into you, weld it to your skin,” He ducked closer to Dean, The smoke was making Dean’s eyes skin and tore at his lungs with every breath.

Dean took a slash.

Azazel fell back, Dean’s fingers screeched.

“Feisty, aren’t you?” Azazel’s voice had an edge, but it was retreating, “Well have fun getting out of here; I’ll come and sweep your ashes up tomorrow morning.”  
Azazel was gone.

Dean leapt through the drapes of fire, coughing and hacking in the futile effort to draw oxygen in. 

Memories of a house fire stirred with the burning building around him.

Castiel’s coughing stirred with his mother’s. 

He could hear an echo of Sam’s six month old crying,His dad’s panicked shouts to Mary.

The sweat running over Dean’s cheeks reminded him of terrified four-year old tears.

Smoke in the corners of the ceiling warped into a crouched demon staring at him with pinprick white eyes and a mouth full of needle teeth.

Dean doubled over, the fire heavy in his lungs, an agonised scream clawed out of his blistering lips as his arm swayed and its hurt chiselled through every nerve in his body.

“Sparky-“ He choked it out with what little air was left, “Where-“ Coughs stole his voice, fire roared all around. 

“Here-“

Close.

Very close.

He reached.

A handful of charred feathers crumbled in is hand.

A hand reached out and took his shoulder.

With a flash of brilliant white and a searing under the vice grip, Dean felt the shards of bone click back together, the suffocating smoke leave his lungs, the blisters on his skin peel away.

He opened his eyes to catch Castiel’s close and blood pour from his nose. 

“Goddamnit-“

Dean grabbed Castiel and hauled him into his arms, draping him over his shoulder, grunting under his dead weight.

Dead weight.

“Hang in there Cas-“

The smoke plunged back down his throat, Dean held his breath. He ran through the fire. The whole building was ablaze.

/You’ve done this before, Dean/

He stumbled through a smouldering door frame, his feet crunched over the splitting wood below.

/Just don’t breathe/

He smelt blood burning, but Crowley and Meg were nowhere.

The window gaped open, bleeding air from the outside.

/Hold onto Castiel like you held onto Sammy/

He ran towards the window and leapt. 

He dissolved into the dark to slow the fall, let it cushion him before he dropped to the bitumen and laid Castiel down. 

No pulse.

No breathing.

/Shit./

He slammed his hands over Castiel’s chest.

“Come on-“ Dean panted as he pounded against Castiel’s ribs, eyes trained on his slack, soot streaked face, ”Come- on -“ More compressions. CPR had to work, it had to. Still no breath, no beat. Each second was a second closer to Castiel slipping away permanently.

/I haven’t even gotten to know you yet, you bastard, find your fucking heartbeat/

Cameras were flashing, people were swarming, sirens were wailing.

Dean crashed his lips down on Castiel’s and shared his air. He pulled back and shared again. And again. Panic was twisting like a dagger in his heart. 

/find your beat/

Another smash of the lips and another shared breath.

/for me, please/

Dean’s arms ached from pressing down, but he wouldn’t stop.

/don’t die/

“You son of a bitch-‘ Dean’s voice broke, tears pricked at his eyes, “You son of a fucking bitch don’t die on me-“

One more press down.

-  
 _Behind Castiel’s eyes, darkness had began to swirl into light. A welcoming glow. Sunlight through clouds. A sense of ascension tugged him gently up, but a red headed angel placed soothing hands over his chest, stopping him from rising into the light._

_Anna’s eyes were sad, her smile was gentle, her hair swirled as though underwater, rippling like red ribbons in an ocean breeze._

_/Don’t go yet, Castiel, it isn’t your time/_

_Castiel looked back with eyes aching for rest._

_/Why?/_

_She kissed his forehead and whispered gently over his soul._

_/You still have work to do/_

_Pulling back, her dark eyes softened_

_/And someone is very intent on keeping you alive/_  
  
-

Castiel breathed back.


	7. A Crash, A pair of Ghosts and a Gardener (Castiel)

The world hit Castiel like a tidal wave, and no, that isn’t a hyperbolized statement in the slightest. 

The wave hit, it chilled, heated, pulled, swirled and /hurt/.

Ash smeared lungs shuddered then twitched then lurched. Dazed, he flicked open unfocussed eyes that dripped pulsing blue. Detail was sporadically gathered from the blurred, noise stained mess pounding against Castiel angrily; camera flashes poked into the dark like needles, in and out quickly then in again, tugging a new thread. Red and blue chased each other but didn’t ever catch.

As though in slow motion, he blinked, focus refining, he aimed his eyes at individual points, willing them through the rasping of his breaths to drink up the detail.

His heart stammered, a string of coughs pummelled his chest and ripped at his throat. 

“Sparky!” The voice sounded distant, but the signal improved with time. Something shook him.

Another blink, a shift of expression and wheezing breaths. Other breaths were close as well, but they weren’t hurting, weren’t orchestrated by the exhausted bellows screaming in the cage of Castiel’s chest.

Raindrops?

Eyes.

“Hey- Can you hear me?” Words were distinguishable, images attached to them. A soot streaked face started to form in the blur lapping at Castiel’s eyes. Castiel’s body started to remember it existed, every inch thick with pins and needles for a second before burning danced with hollowness. 

He tasted smoke, burnt skin and foreign sweat on his tongue.

A firm grip pinched at aching shoulders and shook. The face above creased in concern. The obsidian black of the eyes shone stark and clean in the middle of the dirty, defined yet worry creased features.

As again his lungs pounded against his constricting ribs, the muscles in his neck pushed hard to roll Castiel’s heavy skull. “A-h” An attempt at a response sounded more like a pained whine, but in reality that’s what it was.

Castiel screwed shut his eyes, the voice above curved with a fleeting smile, a breath filled with relief and nerves. Behind his eyelids, Castiel could feel the essence of absent people, of Anna’s warmth, proud words telling him to stay. 

“Thank god- I-“ Castiel forced them back open, he saw the smile now. The camera flashes still pulsed and poked and prodded. Closer. Like vultures the media were circling. “I need to get you fixed up, Sparky- just hold on, okay?”

An ambulance siren joined the storm of sounds, the worried force yanked itself away and out of focus. The grip didn’t falter, it squeezed tighter.

“N-not hos-spital” Like paint scraped from a wall, the words left Castiel’s fire kissed lips in quiet flakes, “Can’t go to the hospital.” He managed to raise a hand, clinging to the arm of the other and revelling in it’s cold.

The reflective black flicked back down, the face with it; the person above radiating anxiety through the biting of a dirty lip and clenching of the jaw. He blew out a sharp breath, a pair of horns poked out of his head and he shouted at the encroaching journalists.

Person above, what was the person’s name? Who was the person?

Black eyes, black suit. Cold to the touch. Sharp jaw . Tough but handsome despite the soot.

Dean. 

The situation pieced back together. There had been demons. There had been fire. There had been smoke and a rescue; healing. Then a lot of hurt, sudden and falling. Something close to death.

The crowd pulled back, Dean leaned back over, close and filling Castiel’s black spotted plain of sight. Castiel felt his breath pool over.

“Where then?”

Castiel’s thoughts pushed and prodded at eachother. Where else to go for help. He closed his eyes and let his air slide out in a stream.

“Hey! Stay with me!” Dean shoved his shoulders, his words were shoving as well, “Don’t you go dying on me, I just saved your ass!”

A response came with a parry of hacks, each one striking the air and tearing Castiel’s cooked throat and lungs. Help. Who could help?  
Who had helped?

A pair of kind eyes soft in an earthy and kind face jumped to memory, soft words and aged but deft hands remembered with the closing of Castiel’s eyes. Counsel, a home, the scent of hundreds of sweet flowers.

“Joshua” Staggered between raking breaths, the name was hissed out, “Paradiso Dei avenue- “

“Right- got it-“ The grip on his shoulders tightened and slipped down, hauling him up and close to Dean’s chilled and smooth body, “Hold on.”

Everything warped.

Everything went cold.

Castiel felt weightless and his body turned to a ghost.

A thrumming chant scraped by his ears and invisible claws tugged at his feet.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was no longer on the street, but slipping through the air, the sky was an odd hue, as though the colour had inverted.

“Dean-“ Castiels voice didn’t carry in the air like it should have, it warped and stretched and echoed in strange ways. The stars turned to dead white eyes that crawled under the skin. 

“Just don’t let go of me, Sparky, they can’t hurt you unless your let them take you” Dean’s words flashed front middle and centre, letters and intonations rippling past as everything around them twisted.

Them. 

Who were they?

Spidery forms teased peripheral vision, growls and croaks and backwards laughs beckoned.

/Follow us/

The grip on Castiel’s ankles burned and stretched his limbs into the shadow. Their bracnlike fingers stroked and plucked at his wings.

His blood was freezing and his eyes widened.

Another haul, Castiel’s grip was slipping.

“I-“

Sensation returned like the cracking of a whip. The stinging on Castiel’s skin, the burn in his lungs, the hammering of his heart and deafening quiet of the suburbs in the night time.

What were the figures that whispered and beckoned and croaked? Did Dean feel them whenever he used his powers? Did he see them all the time?

His knees gave way, Dean caught him before the concrete could.

“Is this the place?”

Castiel didn’t even need to open his eyes to tell, he drew in the plant life with his heavy breathing and sighed.“Yes.”

The silence was split by Dean hammering on the door. Castiel slipped in his grip slightly, but Dean pulled him back up with a grunt.

“Keep conscious, Cas”

Cas. Castiel liked the sound of that. “Trying.”

“Well try harder.”

Castiel managed half a smile before the coughs shook him like a rag doll; almost in response to the fit, the door opened. 

A familiar voice broke through the hacks, a wizened hand pressed to his cheek. Dean, for a second, went stiff.

There was a soft sigh, “Not again,” the hand slipped off, Joshua stepping back, “Well, bring him in here boy, come on-”

Dean huffed, Castiel could feel the retort form and fall as the other carried him in obediently, setting him down somewhere soft.

“Can you help him?” The Winchester spoke with a tone of concern, the usual gruffness gone.

“Of course,” Castiel could feel the room blurring out as he drew in the sweet scents surrounding him, there was a knowing kind of chuckle for Joshua that pulsed and danced with the flowers, “This isn’t the first time he’s come to me after being too generous with his healing.”

Castiel could feel the weight of his smoke tainted clothes peel away, Joshua’s hands testing the skin.

“So this happens a lot?” The worry wasn’t gone, but the volume was less. 

However, that probably wasn’t because Dean was calming down, it was probably because Castiel was zoning out.

“Much more than it should,” Castiel pressed his head back into the sofa, wings going lax as Joshua started the healing process, “This one’s too caring for his own good,” The words were shifting out of focus now, Joshua’s sigh was indeterminable from Castiel’s breathing. 

Everything slipped slowly into a relaxed kind of black, “He’s foolish.” Joshua’s voice held no malicious tones, if anything it was sad.

Joshua worked his magic, Dean watched with crossed arms and a drawn brow.

Castiel breathed the flowers until sleep took him in gentle arms.


	8. Conversations in Eden (Dean)

Standing in the floral haze of Joshua’s apartment, Dean was anything but calm.

The life blooming all around failed to make Castiel look any more lively, the light green emanating from the plants covering every flat surface in the small living room giving his already ashen skin a sickly tint. Dean could still smell the ashes from the fire through the powerful scent of thousands of blossoming flowers. The fact that the other was resting peacefully did nothing to comfort him and his anxiety was carved into his brow in large capital letters.

Joshua read them carefully. “Anybody ever tell you that your costume makes you look like a gargoyle?”

“Huh?” Dean broke his one-sided staring contest to look at the elder. Joshua chuckled in response and Dean failed to register the soothing effect the sound was having on him. 

“Never mind;” The man turned away with a soft smile and pressed the back of his hand against Castiel’s forehead. “If you’re still worried about our friend here, don’t be; I’ve gotten him through worse.” 

Joshua stood back up creakily, “I do this for a lot of supers,” He picked up a watering can that had been camouflaged by the bottled shrubs surrounding it and started to sprinkle its contents over tall flowers stretching from a bush that spilled over what vaguely resembled a coffee table, “Though I’ve yet to meet one with your abilities and... companions.”

“Companions?” 

Joshua sprinkled a metallic powder over his plants methodically, “You’ve got some nasty devils sitting on your shoulder, boy.” 

The letters spelling anxious swapped for those spelling surprised, “How did you-“

“The foxglove; notice the way the blooms are sticking up” Joshua ran his fingers over the gentle hoods of the flowers he was tending to, “Humble little warning; the blessed things are trying to scare the bad spirits away.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“You’re all questions, aren’t you?” Joshua laughed quietly when Dean retreated slightly at Joshua’s retort, “I’m a healer and a quarter wood nymph, its my job to understand my garden.”

The flowers all seemed to nod in agreement, Dean blinked a couple times to try and convince himself they hadn’t.

His demons started hissing, Dean noticed the foxglove get just a little bit stiffer under Joshua’s fingertips. 

“Hmm; I take it I wasn’t wrong?”

“Yeah…” Dean squinted, rubbing the bridge of his nose as the demons continued to snarl at the plant life, “The fuckers really hate your garden, sorry.” He tugged at the side of his mask and caught Joshua’s knowing stare, “Is it okay if I..?”

“Feel free.”

The incantation rolled off Dean’s tongue and he tugged off his mask with a sigh of relief, the snarling reduced to background static. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel that worried about exposing his identity to Joshua, the guy just had a grandfatherly gentleness about him that repelled insecurity. 

“You have a name?”

“Dean,” the Winchester ran his fingers through his hair, a few beads of sweat dripped from the strands and down the side of his face, “Or ‘black impala’ if there are people around.” He stifled a yawn, the adrenaline from the fight finally starting to simmer down. “Can I borrow your phone?”

The other nodded, “It’s in the kitch-“

“Don’t-“Castiel interrupted them. 

Both sets of eyes turned quickly to the other’s now twitching body, noting with concern the drawn expression and tightness of form. Joshua was quick to his side and Dean went to crouch by him as well, Joshua however, waved him off.

“Make your call, Castiel will be fine.”

Dean opened his mouth to speak.

“No buts;” Joshua expertly shushed him, fixing him with a stern look and pointing at his chest, “Go on then- and mind the cactus.”

“The cactus?“

“Kind of hard to miss it,” Joshua was now fully focussed on Castiel, he was dusting some of the powder from before over Castiel’s restless eyelids.

Suspecting Joshua wouldn’t be afraid to use one of his powders on him should he remain in the room, Dean was quick to move to the phone.

And no, the cactus definitely was not hard to miss. It would be very difficult to miss something that violently pink.

He pricked himself when he picked up the semi-ancient corded phone, he pricked himself more when he flinched at the initial pricking.

Joshua mumbled an ‘I warned you’ from the other room.

Dean dialled in Sam’s cell as he mumbled a ‘shut up’ back at the old man. 

He stitched together a cover for where he was quickly and was very ready to drop it in Sam’s answering machine; however, despite the fact that it was 2:30am and Sam had supposedly been at a party (which surely meant the kid was smashed if Dean had any knowledge of parties), his younger brother picked up very, very quickly.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Hey Sammy-“

“Dean! “Dean nearly dropped the phone, “It’s like, what- half past two in the morning, why aren’t you home?”

“Woah- dude-calm down-“

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I-“

Sam cut him off with a quick sigh, “Have you been drinking? You’re slurring-”

“What?” Dean went to lean against the counter and half yelped when he backed into the cactus.

“What was that?” Dean would be flattered with how concerned his brother was, but he was tired as hell and didn’t have the energy for it.

“A cactus, Sam. I bumped into a fucking cactus.” He looked before he leaned back this time, “And no, I’m sober. Just tired.” 

“Wait, a cactus-?”

“Yeah, a fluorescent pink motherfucking cactus,” Dean knew what Sam was going to ask, “And before you ask, no, I’m not high, either, and do you honestly think I’m dumb enough to take the kind of stuff that’d make me see random-ass cacti? My friend just has a weird taste in house-plants.”

“‘course not Dean, I never said that you were-” Sam paused, “What friend?”

“A friend; you don’t know them, they’re from my new work,” Dean stopped to think about how exactly he was going to get Sam to stop prying, then it hit him, “Brunette, blue eyes, kinda quirky…” Dean tried to pack a good serving of ‘wink wink nudge nudge TOTALLY HAD SEX’ into every syllable, “Got this spark, man, real energetic if you catch my drift- I mean, wow, Sam, /wow./”

It worked very, very well.

“Oh- gross-“ Dean could almost see Sam’s scrunched up nose, “Too much detail, Dean.”

“Hey, you’re the one who asked, buddy.” Dean shrugged with a smirk, he spotted Joshua going back to his gardening in the other room, ”What are you doing up this late anyway? You didn’t find yourself a quirky brunette, too, did you?”

“Shut up,” Dean felt the power of Sam’s bitch-face radiating through the phone, “I’m up because the party got evacuated; there was a crazy faceoff between some supers and that half-built hotel downtown got burnt to the ground.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was crazy; Eva’s party was only like, a block down; emergency services kicked us all out- the fire was massive.”

Dean felt his heart jolt; Sam was that close? “Anybody get hurt? “

“No- no- one kid, what’s his name? Andy- yeah, Andy was kinda stoned and fell over, but that was it, everyone got out fine.”

“Awesome- that’s great Sammy,” Dean sighed, the sigh quickly turned into a yawn.

“I should probably go sleep, I’ve got school tomorrow and you’ve got work.”

“Ugh, yeah; good night, bitch, see ya tomorrow.”

Sam mirrored Dean’s yawn from earlier, “Same for you, jerk.”

Dean hung up and wandered back into the living room, rubbing his eyes and repressing another yawn. He threw a heavy lidded glance at Castiel, who was no longer thrashing, before sitting on the arm of the sofa and finding Joshua tending to plants in a darker corner of the room. Dean could swear he heard something buzzing. “Is it okay if I stay the night? I don’t think I’ve got the juice to get back home.”

“Go right ahead,” Joshua called back, “But I haven’t got another sofa, so you’ll have to brave the floor or risk getting hit when Castiel starts dreaming about his time with the Angels again…”

“Time with the Angels?” Dean’s interest was baited, call it morbid curiosity, “What do you-“ Dean bit his lip to stop himself, “Sorry, I should be asking him, not you.”

“Don’t fret,” Joshua abandoned whatever had been buzzing at him in the corner and forced open a cupboard, producing a blanket and pillow and tossing them over to Dean, “I probably couldn’t tell you the whole story anyway,” 

“That bad, huh?”

“From what he’s told me, bad is an understatement.” He started to make his way out of the room and down the hall, “Poor thing’s been through hell, careful about what you ask.”

Joshua disappeared into what Dean guessed was his room, leaving the Winchester alone with Castiel and the plants.

The floor was cold.

With Castiel curled up on it, the sofa was quite the opposite.

Dean decided to risk getting hit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry- ugh, this is like two weeks late; I've just been procrastinating so much and this chapter kept running away from me. Hopefully it satisfies and doesn't have too many typos c:


	9. Dusting Skeletons (Castiel)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is full of backstories. And they are not happy backstories. You have been warned. Also something happens that you guys will probably appreciate. ((it also may be cheesy in spots? tried to avoid it as much as humanly possible but dude))

Castiel wasn’t in Joshua’s apartment. Or at least, his head certainly wasn’t. 

Where he was, everything was harsh and white and sterile. 

Like bleached bones.

His chest constricted around his lungs and his hear; he would struggle against his restraints but a drug held him perfectly still, his stomach cold as ice against the unforgiving metal, his head forced to stare down at uniform tiles while a gag muffled the screams that came tumbling out of his panicked throat.

His body was younger, thinner, softer. His voice hadn’t even broken. 

He was 13 years old.

God, he was only 13 years old.

Feet strayed into view and voices started prodding at his sides. Fingers tucked in powdered gloves traced lines between his shoulders. Sweat leaked out and goosebumps rippled in their wake.

A marker bit and left dark, cold streaks on his warm skin. Disinfectant was sponged over the flesh, the reek of it sat bitter and harsh in the air.

“So you’ll weave them into the muscle?” By now Castiel knew the voice, hearing it made him scream louder. Michael was standing so close. Castiel could smell his fresh clothes, his clean breath. To an outsider, the man would resemble a prince. 

Fair, charming, organised and polite.

Cruel.

Sadistic.

Righteous.

“Yes sir- with a few enhancements and alterations, linking them there should mean he’ll be able to use them.” 

_Use what?_

“Yes but will he be able to fly?” Michael’s hand was on Castiel’s shoulder now, gently stroking over it as if to soothe, “Flightless birds are good for nothing.”

“Oh he’ll be able to soar through the skies like nothing the world has ever seen,” The surgeon paused, no doubt smiling, “He’ll make a beautiful angel.”

“He better, Zachariah, or I’ll see to it you never operate again.” Castiel’s skin seethed as soon as Michael stepped back, he wanted to scream out for help, but no one would hear him even without the gag there to hush him.

Castiel felt a needle slide into him near the start of his spine.

“Stop-“ Nothing was injected, “No anaesthetic, not even local. Make him remember this.”

“Sir, he’s so young-“

“Exactly. Children forget. Pain can’t be forgotten.”

Michael was right.

It can’t be.

That was why Castiel was lying there again on that table, years and years later. Back in his weak, teenage body. Tied up. Crying. Lost. Feeling that first searing hurt of the scalpel as it neatly traced the lines drawn on his skin.

But the cutting didn’t hurt, not really. Not next to what followed.

Castiel fainted when his skin was peeled aside and his muscles probed at and tugged.

He woke again to a pain that made his head reel and his stomach invert. He would writhe but his body refused to budge as the blood gushed out and shone against the white of his skin and the white of the tiles. His nerves were painting Castiel’s world red and making it swirl and tear. A scream lapped against the gag as tears poured from Castiel’s wide and panicked eyes.

“Hush.” Zachariah spoke calmly. Years had passed and the calmness of his surgeon still haunted him, “Bite down, you’ll choke yourself if you keep that racket up.”

Within seconds consciousness had slipped again through Castiel’s trembling fists. It didn’t return for a long while, the hurt, however, remained.

Pounding and stabbing and stretching and shattering.

In a way, it never left.

 

-

 

Castiel woke with a mask of cold sweat and daggers in his throat. He hauled in the air, in a shocked spasm, he pressed himself backwards, gasping as his wings flinched to avoid being crushed. He felt a flicker of the peeling pain again and clenched his fists.

His knees rammed into something warm.

Castiel looked down.

Dean was tangled in a bedsheet just inches away. 

And his body was stiff, breathing staggered. Castiel could almost feel the nightmares leaking from his skin.

He swallowed the fear from his memories and nudged the other’s shoulder, tugging away the sheets bunched around his neck. His throat was too hoarse to speak.

The other’s eyelids flicked open and ink drained out to reveal wide and frightened eyes. 

They mirrored each other’s panicked expressions and shared heavy, stale breaths in the peaceful quiet of the flower flooded living room.

Castiel’s hand still squeezed on Dean’s shoulder, clinging to him both to anchor himself and the other.

“Alright?” Castiel’s voice was hoarser than usual, it scraped out of him messily and fell to the floor in thin, sandy flakes.

“I’ll live.” Time slipped on and slowly the tenseness in Dean’s body started to loosen, Castiel could feel the other’s pulse slowing down, “You?”

Castiel looked away, focussing instead on the sheets knotted in his fist. He blinked and when he did, he saw the tiles spattered with red. His wings shifted, behind him, pressing close to his back, the feathers flattened and shrunk as small as they could. He remembered how at first they felt as though they were held to his skin by meat hooks. “I’ve had worse” Was all he could muster without letting the neutrality break. It wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one.

The air was static despite the buzzing of bees and the life that crowded all around.

“Tell me.”

Castiel snapped up his neck, shifting, knuckles whitening as he chased words. “I-“ His grip on Dean’s shoulder slipped and his hands hung awkwardly by his sides, “I don’t know if…”

The other looked at him with an austere and flat gaze that didn’t fail to emit warmth even in its harshness. 

“It’s-“

“We can trade stories,” Dean suggested quietly, gesturing for them to move, “Bit by bit.”

They sat side by side. Both of them tired and still carrying their fears.

Time to lay them down.

“I’ll start.” Dean sighed, Castiel faced him and studied him. “When I was four years old, I started hearing voices,” Castiel heard dam in Dean’s head spring a leak. Black water started to trickle out, “It was after a fire, a bad one; started in Sam’s nursery.” 

The trickle ran faster and boiled, it left a trail of ash.

“It was scary; my dad told me to get my brother out and when I found him, there was… something else there- it latched onto me.”

Dean stopped. Castiel retreated from where he’d been staring to focus on the other’s face. “Your turn.”

Castiel felt the scalpel.

He twitched.

“I wasn’t born with the wings, but I’ve always had the healing ,”His voice was hushed as he remembered cradling birds with broken wings and mending their thin fractured bones, he remembered going up to kids crying on the playground and fixing their skinned knees. “I used my healing power too much,” He felt so happy to make people better, but it sapped at his life, “I was lethargic and sick almost all of my childhood, always coming down with things, I was too naïve to realise how much my healing was hurting me.” 

But that wasn’t the worst. 

Castiel sighed and continued. 

His own dam started to split.

“My parents died not long after my tenth birthday; they were driving to the hospital to come pick me up when they crashed.” 

If he wasn’t so deep in his remembering, he would have noticed the sad shift in Dean’s expression.

“I tried to heal them, stood by their graves after the funeral just- trying and trying to bring them back-“ His voice broke, but tears didn’t slip. “I couldn’t- all I did was draw attention to myself. The leader of the Angels kidnapped me.”

Dean’s hands threw themselves over the cracks deepening in Castiel’s dam. “Cas if it’s too much-“ Tentatively, his hand took Castiel’s, as if unsure or unfamiliar with the action, “I can go now; we’re swapping stories remember?” He tried to smile, “Like gradeschoolers passing notes.”

“Yeah…” Cas squeezed Dean’s hand back. The other looked at his fingers meshed with Castiel’s with a soft frown. Not the angry kind. More perplexed. “What happened after the fire?”

“Nothing good.” Dean stated flatly.

The buzzing of the bees stopped. The foxglove bristled. The dark got darker.

Castiel couldn’t help but shiver and lean closer.

“Dad didn’t cope well with Mom’s death.” Castiel watched Dean’s eyes, staring blankly across the room, almost glassy, “He drank a lot, shouted; he coped even less well with his four year old kid who said that the shadows liked to talk to him.” He paused. “He broke when I started seeing them.”

The deadness of Dean’s gaze was chilling.

He didn’t need Dean to say it to know what his father had done to him. Castiel didn’t know what to say to him. 

“After that I shut up.” 

The dark rippled.

Even the essence of the demons was enough to make Castiel want to run and hide, being with them for seconds had made him want to scream. He couldn’t imagine living with them. Keeping them bottled up inside. He sat in silence, watching Dean as he remained unmoving.

“Tell me about the Angels.”

Dean’s fingers were cold around Castiel’s hand.

“They were monsters.” Castiel shifted his hand in Dean’s cage-like grip, “I wasn’t a person to them, I was just ‘he’, or ‘child’- after a time I turned into an ‘it’.” He traced Dean’s white knuckles, looking at them to try and keep his cell out of sight, “I was locked up and everything was so clean and bleached; everyday they would come and fill my head with terrible things; images, words.”

Michael would come into his cell with a gentle smile. 

Soft and welcoming like a spiderweb dripping with dew.

Castiel would let down his guard and then Michael would be filling his veins with venom.

Mind control.

“They filled me with serums and put me in machines that burned my skin; they loved to experiment with me, testing poisons and surgeries…”

Hell.

“They gave me wings when I turned thirteen. They didn’t knock me out. I felt every hour of the surgery and I still do.”

Dean’s stony expression had cracked, black, bloody water gushed from the shattered shell of Castiel’s reservoir. 

The skeletons were pouring out of his closet like a flood.

“God…”

“They let me out sometimes after that but…I-I… Dean, I…”

_I killed people._

_I killed people._

He couldn’t bear to say it aloud.

The cage around Castiel’s hand squeezed tight, Cas looked up, the blurry images of the bodies he’d hacked to pieces pushed aside and replaced with Dean’s shocked mossy eyes. “Cas whatever you did, it wasn’t you.”

Castiel wasn’t so sure.

“Tell me what happened when you couldn’t keep it inside”

“I got beat half way to hell, that’s what happened.” Dean drew his knees up to his chest, breaking the hand contact to wrap his arms around his legs and pull them close, “When I was twelve, I had my first premonition; I seized so bad it broke my bones. I would scream and cry out in the middle of the night, and Dad’d come in stinking of Jack and try to kick the crazy out.”

Dean scoffed.

“He’d blame the fire on me, blame everything on me. Eventually he had to cave in and send me to hospital. But the hospital was so much worse.”

The room went dark again. 

“At least at home I could kick and scream at the demons to go away; in hospital I got strapped up and drugged out of my mind- it opened me up to them.”

Dean flicked his head nervously to the corner of the room, he stared at something that wasn’t there, or at least, at something Castiel couldn’t see. His body got tenser.

“They almost took me in there, I forgot I was alive.”

Instincts hit Castiel hard. 

He wrapped his arms around Dean’s curled body and wrapped him tight in a hug.

Nobody should have to go through that. 

Not Dean. Not Cas. Nobody.

At first Dean seemed stunned by the contact, but when it didn’t go away, he loosened. Castiel felt the other’s arms slip from where they sat binding his knees, Dean leaning towards Castiel slightly. 

“I got out with a label and prescriptions. Got bullied at high school, of course, but home was unbearable. Dad thought adding to my bruises would toughen me up, you see, so that's how I spent my waking hours. Then when he got sick of it, he'd make me take my meds," Dean bit his lip, looking towards his hands,"… the only reason I didn’t slit my wrists was Sammy.”

Castiel had wanted the same thing the whole time he was with the Angels. But it wasn’t love that kept him from offing himself, he just lacked the resources.

Castiel let his arms hang around Dean instead of holding him. 

“How did you get out?”

“Anna. A scientist there helped me escape when I was sixteen.”

“Why?”

“She saw the humanity in me. Didn’t want me to lose it I guess.”

The storm clouds of the night he escaped started to roll over the ceiling.

“What happened to her?”

Castiel remembered her voice as she cried out for him to run. Then the gun shots. He had looked over his shoulder and saw her red hair fill with blood as the bullets erupted from her skull.

“Shot.”

Silence.

“They didn’t find you after?”

“No. Anna told me to go to Eden, so I found it, Paradiso Dei avenue-Latin - means God’s garden. I found Joshua and he took me in and did what he does. But the Angels never stopped trying to get me back. You met one that night in the hospital, Uriel.”

Dean shifted, his hands ghosted over Castiel’s sides as he pulled back, finding his hands and taking them hesitantly before squeezing them tight. His face was tired, softened by sadness but hardened by a slight but stretching anger. In the mellow light of the room, Dean’s features were suggested rather than shown. Their eyes connected. 

There weren’t any tears in either set. Those had seeped back into the flesh long ago. Aching there.

Thousands of words sat between them. Letters stewing in the air, punctuation drifting. 

“The demons gave me this suit after my dad got himself killed.” His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “Scares the shit out of me, but I can use it to kick ass, stop monsters like the Angels from fucking everything up.”

Castiel relaxed his wings, feeling Dean’s quiet words resonate. “Same deal with you, your healing hurts, the wings give you nightmares.”

“Selfless.” Cas sighed, “Dangerously.”

“Exactly.” Dean smiled and despite how defeated it was, it felt real. He leant back against the sofa, closing his eyes. The smile stayed. “Wonder if any other heroes are as screwed to hell as we are.”

“No idea,” Castiel followed suit. Unrested, his body was prepared to collapse. The skeletons in his closet had been rearranged and labelled. He knew them better now that someone else had seen them. Doubtless, they would still howl and clack their bones. “I guess we just drew the short straw.”

The sofa creaked as Castiel let himself lean against Dean carefully. Outside, light was just starting to tease the night. Dean’s breathing was deep and slow, his eyes were open just in slithers that caught the beginnings of the sunrise. 

“Although,” He turned, Castiel looked up gradually, “It hasn’t been all bad.”

Their gazes started to sew themselves together. Castiel transfixed. 

Shared hardship. Shared nightmares. Shared obsession with everything but themselves. 

Shared dark.

Shared space slowly shrinking. Magnetising.

Unfamiliar in different ways to both of them.

The ocean lapped against the hills. 

Castiel did not recede like the tide, when Dean’s lips, as if lead by threads, touched his own. 

He did not go back out to sea as every instinct he had told him. Didn’t push Dean away. 

No.

Castiel, in the midst of the skeletons strewn all around and the dark water that had spilled from their minds, let himself kiss Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter! That's new. Also, kiss- right? yeah? Hopefully not too bad? ((I am writing this at 2 in the morning))
> 
> There'll be more detail next chapter, don't fret.
> 
> Also, This probably had some cheesy moments in it (I feel like it did anyway- not as cheesy as the original RP text but there's only so much I can do haha) don't let the cheese put you off (if you dislike cheese that is)- there won't be a great deal of cheese to come. Not soon at any rate (and some funny and cute and romantic stuff amongst more action and all that jazz)  
> (((also fixed up the street name; don't know where i got the old one from :L )))
> 
> And, finally, to be a broken record, please comment! It encourages me to write faster- which may mean less delays and updates that are actually on time (woah!)


	10. Foreign (Dean)

When his lips met with Castiel’s, Dean was lost.

He was suddenly unsure, frightened, and felt as though everything was shrouded in smoke.

He didn’t know Castiel. But at the same time he knew him far more intimately than anyone else. He didn’t know what he was doing or where he was headed. 

But the smokescreen that was clouding swiftly all around wasn’t taking the other away from him. It was blocking everything else out.

The room, the memories he’d been too hurt to throw into the open, the bitter snarls of the demons that were clinging to his back. All of it blurred at the contact and dipped away to black.

All he could feel was the gentle graze of Castiel’s cracked lips over his own. All he could hear was his heartbeat and the essence of breath. All he could taste was the salt of blood dried on his lips as Castiel turned it red again.

The flowers were still there. Lingering sweetly.

Where Castiel’s body rested against him, warmth was blossoming. Dean was so cold and he was so warm.

He wanted to get warm.

His hand found Castiel’s side and melted over it like ice over a lit match. He was melting all over, where Castiel’s hand reached over to him as well, where his breath went whispering across his lips and cheeks. 

It was like he was somewhere else, floating and dissolving blissfully. He was worlds away and the only thing anchoring him to anything real was the fleeting bittersweet brush of Castiel’s lips.

He’d never felt like this ever before, he expected he’d never feel like this ever again.

Castiel was taking light jabs at his half open lips, slowly persuading them to move in time with them. 

For a moment they pressed together and stuck. Holding together and stealing each other’s breath mercilessly.

Heat was swelling in Dean’s bloodstream and electricity crackled over his skin.

It was overwhelming.

For both of them, it seemed.

Castiel pulled back first, not far back but the contact was broken nonetheless. Dean managed to open his eyes again, catching an elusive breath as the smoke cleared slightly.

As it cleared, his body went hollow. Like something had been sucked out of him.

“Cas…” His voice whispered out of him and he could barely hear it over the pounding of his heart. 

The other was silent, but his eyes were crowded with a thousand things to say. They were glowing, too; static bit at his fingers. Dean waded into the stare, each airless breath drawing him in and under its blue.

The mist rolled back down and around. 

Dean fell over Castiel slowly, toppling into his heat and spark. Neither of them spoke. Both of them were filled to bursting point with tangled thoughts.

Only thoughts. No monsters hiding and whispering out of sight. Only Castiel.

Endlessly Castiel.

Dean, lost, trailed his hands over the other with anxious disbelief frothing up his blood. He traced the curve of Castiel’s shoulders, knelt down and let his lips hover close by. 

Castiel passed him a breath full of tremors.

Dean closed his eyes and dropped to catch it. Their lips were sewn together upon impact.

What was this?

Intimacy? Was this what intimacy is?

Dean wouldn’t know.

He was scared to open his eyes. It would disappear if he did that, twist into something starved and tarry with soulless eyes. 

Castiel was making gentle sounds amongst his breaths, they, like his breath, shook. Uncertain, doubtful like Dean was of the reality of what was happening.

Trailing sparks jolted up Dean’s arms and ran through his body right down to his toes. They stung in passing, but only just enough. Rippling, brushing over and biting in a way that failed to truly hurt. It felt good to feel them.

Each one shouted “real”.

Dean pressed his lips more firmly down, more salt bloomed and Castiel pressed back. Their teeth clacked and tongues hit in awkward ways the exact right number of times.

Castiel’s barely there stubble scratched Dean’s chin. 

Dean’s hands had trailed to Castiel sides.

His fingertips brushed something cool and soft .

Feathers.

He gathered a few more hushed sighs before tearing the stitches apart and breaking contact, willing his eyes open. 

The wings looked like sheets of frayed black silk. Reflective. Dark. Blurred around the edges. 

When Dean went to touch the arches, Castiel flinched. Shock, however, submitted to a dazed bliss as the touch persisted. 

How many times had the other been touched in his life?

Was Dean his first?

He twirled his fingers through the feathers, clinging to the heat and fragile skin underneath. The wings had been touched before, but never with care. Dean couldn’t think of any other way he’d want to touch them.

Dean was nudged by the mists, his lips dabbing at Castiel’s neck, then collar bone, chest then wings. It was like kissing air, heavy, cool air. 

Underneath him, Castiel sighed sweetly. His body rose and fell loosely, head pressed back and lips apart.

Dean was his first. 

In some ways Castiel was his.

His demons had never been silent for anyone before. Not with kissing, not with touching, not with sex. They were always there, poisoning every good feeling and gnawing away at it until it was thin and weak.

But they weren’t there now.

Not even slightly.

Dean kissed harder and stroked the feathers tenderly, a moan rolled out of Castiel like molasses.

Dean couldn’t help but do the same when Castiel rose his hands to Dean’s chest and slid them around to his back, touching him like his skin might break if he pressed any harder.  
It was strange and overwhelming and so impossibly real.

He left the wings, still holding them tight, and found Castiel’s lips again. Both of them were struggling to breathe, skin hot, bodies tired beyond belief but being coaxed gently to life by their embrace. 

Mist mixed with heat mixed with flowers mixed with the taste of blood mixed with feathers mixed with bliss. All of it stirred together in the form of their warm bodies ticking with erratic heartbeats.

They broke, properly this time. 

Dean knew because the demons came back. Only softly.

Castiel looked up at Dean and his eyes followed him when he lay by his side. A sentence tangled on Dean’s tongue and died there.

Dean rested a hand on Castiel’s chest and static prickled over it. 

“Dean.” Castiel whispered.

“Cas.”The name was still foreign to him.

Perhaps, given time, it would stop being that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter (and late too- guh- I've actually had 99% of this written for ages) but hopefully pretty enough to satisfy. Yay for kissing essentially.
> 
> Also; I've decided to start posting up some art related to this series (because hey hey I draw stuff and do so fairly well), go hither to see what I've got so far (following art work may not be as detailed as what's there at the moment fyi- I prefer sketching to more realistic stuff usually) --> http://archiveofourown.org/works/3104888


	11. Wake to a Dream (Castiel)

When the sun rose the next day and cast its shimmery, golden glow over the forest of Joshua’s living room, Castiel Novak and Dean Winchester were sleeping soundly.

In each other’s arms.

Castiel had been dreaming about things that weren’t whitewashed and disinfected. No surgeries or tortures had poisoned him, the fear was all gone from his blood.

Dean’s grip around him held it off.

Like armour.

His eyes were heavy when a sound blurred around. Some words, Joshua probably.

Dean moved, Castiel felt his breath stop falling on his cheek. He said something back. Castiel was still too asleep to make sense of the sound.

Not that he cared. 

There was no reason to, not when the blur was so safe.

He relaxed his senses, not bothering to wake them further. Idly he chased the fragment of a dream while the warmth crowded gently around him and his skin sifted it into his bloodstream. 

His pursuit was a slow one, he found that his mind held tight all the feelings from the outside even as he delved deeper to the inside. Only a few of the outer feelings were distinct, though. 

Smell of toasting bread. Earthy fragrance of chrysanthemums in bloom. Shimmering autumn draught curling by his toes. 

And, of course, the heat and gentle motion of another human being beside him.

Castiel let the feelings stir together while he followed the shadow shape of his dream down the corridor of his mind.

It was familiar, but not. A person, but not. 

He could recall it skating over fields of ice as lightning crackled in the air.

The smell of burning trailed from its motion as well, peppery and full of heat while its skin was cold as the landscape that held it so dearly.

The soot scent was just growing close to him, as was the chill, when a feeling from the outside tugged him away from it. A simple nudge, a ruffling of his hair.

The snowy landscape slipped away and the figure glided with it. 

More details of the waking world became clearer in an instant; more flowers joined the chrysanthemums and a steady heart beat that wasn’t his own sounded by his ear.

The disturbance was still nestled in his hair; with great effort, Castiel batted it away and attempted to vocalise his annoyance. All that left him was a grunt, though.

The chest by Castiel’s cheek bounced slightly by means of a chuckle.

A bit of light was leaking in through his eyelids so Castiel finally persuaded himself to open them, screwing them up initially as one always does.

The first impression of what he saw resembled a black mountainside with a sky coated with a floral damask.

A couple blinks and a shifting of the eyes took that bizarre image away.

The mountainside was revealed to be the combination of Dean’s suited chest and Castiel’s feathers; the floral sky Joshua’s tacky sofa.

Castiel looked up to where he guessed Dean’s face would be and found it (why he had expected not to was beyond him); the most noticeable feature Castiel took in was the gold trimming that the sun provided the other’s thick eyelashes with.

“Morning.” Dean’s voice was husky in its quietness.

Castiel looked and absorbed for a while before responding; eyes sopping up Dean’s freckles and stubble and ever so slightly smiling lips.

They linked what they observed to memories of the night before. 

More warmth than was there already swelled in the wrappings of Castiel’s lungs.

“Morning.” His reply was no louder than Dean’s, but at least twice as rough. He mirrored Dean’s smile, still caught in disbelief.

The sudden smack of opening oven doors interrupted them like an unnecessary full stop.

“Breakfast is ready in the kitchen if you want it-“ Joshua called out from a little bit away. The toast smell was emphasised as the draught circulated it through the house and mixed it up with the flowers.

While Castiel was looking away towards the kitchen, Dean leant in and placed a tentative kiss on his cheek.

Needless to say that got Cas’s attention pretty quick.

“Sleep well?”

The imprint of the kiss was still in effect when Castiel turned to find the other’s eyes again. “Wonderfully”, the word didn’t feel like an overstatement in any way whatsoever, “Better than I have in years.” The roughness chipped away a bit and his words were sigh-like in execution. “You?”

Dean, while perhaps there was a hint of tightness in his expression, replied in a similarly relaxed tone. “First time I’ve slept without nightmares since I was a kid.” Castiel would like to think Dean was exaggerating, but his voice read honest. “So- the word I’d pick would have to be ‘awesomely’-“ He paused, “That’s a word, right?”

“It’s a word, don’t worry.” Castiel assured Dean with a smile. The other let his head drop back to the sofa cushions and Castiel felt Dean’s hand roll idly over his chest. Castiel shifted his wings over Dean a bit closer than before, enveloping him in his feathers. He interrupted the movement of Dean’s hand by taking it in his own.

Dean squeezed it and looked up at the ceiling with a yawning sigh that he covered with his forearm.

Yawns being as contagious as they are, Castiel found himself in a similar situation.

“We should get up.” 

In subtitle, Dean said _But I really, really don’t want to._

Castiel agreed wholeheartedly with both sentiments, so when Dean sat up, he followed suit (in a manner almost identical to the other). He stretched his arms up over his head and his wings fanned out to either side of him, one of them brushed against Dean’s arm as he, like Castiel, stretched.

Castiel stood, legs complaining at first but calming with time. He fluffed out his feathers and angled his wings towards the ceiling. The larger feathers touched it.

A couple more twists of the joints and Castiel was feeling relatively limber; and strangely, he didn’t feel even remotely tired. Sleepy, maybe, but not tired.

He craned his neck back to see how Dean was going.

The other was looking at him already, it seemed- though his eyes had not been at eye level, just a bit under it. Roughly shoulder-blade to lower back range.

“What?” His voice held the shape of his amused smile.

“Nothing-“ A little smirk formed on the Winchester’s lips, creasing it in an interesting way as he squeezed Cas’s shoulder on the way past him. “Just admiring”

Castiel watched Dean as he walked; he didn’t quite get what Dean had meant until he absent mindedly looked at the same area on Dean.

Nice muscular curve framed by the tight black of the suit. Dip of the spine, subtle curve of the hips. 

_Admiring._

He smirked on his way to the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay; this is a teeny weeny chapter (sorry) but there were some issues in its production (I had most of it written, my dodgy school laptop crashed and it was all gone when i opened it up; and re-writing it took a while because rehashing old stuff is a bit of a chore) so there's sort of a reason as to why. Anyway, hope it pleases! The chapter was going to be longer, but i decided to divide it up. Next update shouldn't be too far away c: However, I'm just starting to get assignments this year (in the last year of high school D: ) so I'm not making any definite promises. 
> 
> As always, comments are greatly appreciated! And if people would like more images/drawings of specific scenes from the fanfic or characters that appear in it, please mention it in a comment and I'll make an effort to whip something up and add it to my Shadow Sp-art (lame, i know) collection c:


	12. Rumour Has It (Castiel)

Outside the Orbit Post, the air was crowded with exhaust and words.The revving of engines muffled the early morning birdsong, and the excited buzz of chatter seeped through that the way blood seeps through cloth. 

The events of last night were giving every reporter worth their ink a story and then some to get written. Anything superhero was always a popular topic for the paper, the more violent and dramatic the better. So, despite the fact that nobody had died, the spectacle of the attack on Lawrence Square and reputation all those involved let it more than meet those parameters.

As they stepped into the main office, Castiel threw a glance at Dean. He had gone quiet, face set stubbornly in what Castiel was coming to understand was his default expression; a cold scowl. Castiel had done this a million times, he’d been working here for years now. The chaotic scramble all around didn’t phase him all that much, it rolled around him thickly, but stopped at skin level. Dean, on the other hand, was drowning in it.

Any one of these people could be writing about him, spreading rumours about him. One of them could recognize him, it wasn’t like the mask of his suit turned him into somebody else. Castiel could see every single ‘what if’ scenario scrambling for attention behind Dean’s eyes, slicing worry lines in his forehead far deeper than Castiel expected.

He was just about to say something to haul him from suffocating anxiety when Kevin’s voice cut neatly through the dense air and tore Castiel’s eyes from Dean’s rigid composure

“Hey-I thought you weren’t gonna turn up, man- you okay?”

Castiel turned to his friend, blinking and taking a second to think before he spoke, “Yeah yeah- I’m fine-” He ran a hand quickly through his hair, one of his many ‘tells’, “Just had a long night.”

Dean, who didn’t quite know what to do with himself now Castiel was caught in conversation, got a bit stiffer. Almost by reflex and forgetting that Kevin could see him doing it, Castiel absently reached back to squeeze the other’s hand in an attempt to calm him. 

The gesture was not very effective, but Dean did squeeze back and hand him half a smile.

Kevin’s eyes flicked between the both of them, sticking for a hot second on their joint hands. When he looked up again, he was smirking slightly, “Long night, huh?” The smirk turned to a grin when Castiel blushed and Dean cleared his throat. Kevin’s expression was the epitome of smugness. “I’ll bet-” He turned to Dean, “I never got your name-”

Dean nodded in a jilted way, scowl slipping a little and form limbering up just a fraction. “Dean. And you are?”

“Kevin Tran-” They shook hands. They didn’t get much time to do much else though. 

“Can a-” The woman speaking over the intercom sighed, she covered the microphone with her hand, muffling the sound but not completely silencing herself, “You’re a bastard, Gabriel, you know that?” Another sigh, the hand gone “Can a ‘Casa-Novak’ report to the head office please?”

Castiel reacted to the nickname like it stunk of rotten eggs. Both Dean and Kevin enjoyed his expression quietly, “I should go.” Apologetic glances were evenly distributed and, with great reluctance and a hefty measure of dread, Castiel ran over to be barked around by his boss.

\--

The dread was justified.

Castiel was to interview a witness of the event and write an article. This, initially, may not have sounded all that bad, but the witness was someone Castiel had hoped to god he’d never have to deal with.

Becky Rosen.

At first glance, the girl didn’t look like anyone special. She was small, round-faced, kind of mousy looking; incredibly non-threatening. But dangerous things don’t always look dangerous, they tend to be very sneaky like that.

This girl, despite her meek appearance, was the cruelest gossip Satellite City had ever seen. Her blog had effectively _destroyed lives_ with the way it twisted information, and her love for supers did nothing to stop her handing out all the wrong sorts of information about them.

Castiel had to force himself not to get up and leave, and masking his disgust was proving difficult. Hidden under his suit, his feathers had smoothed right down as flat as they could get in an instinctual want to hide.

He forced a smile as he took out a notebook and pen. The excitement on Becky’s face told him loud and clear that te odds were not in his and Dean’s favour.

“Miss Rosen, can you-”

“Please, call me Becky-”

Castiel bit his lip and twirled his pen swiftly in his fingers, tapping the nib on the paper to suppress the urge to frown at her. “Alright- Becky- As i was saying,” He tried his best to look friendly, “Can you tell me what exactly it was you saw last night?”

Becky lit up.

Castiel braced himself.

“Well, I saw so much-” She paused, scanning Castiel’s nameplate, “Castiel- can I call you Cas?” She didn’t wait for Castiel to approve, “Anyway, I saw so much, Cas, I don’t know where to start!”

 _Stop being dramatic, you know exactly where._ Castiel thought to himself as he feigned interest, nodding along softly. “Just start at the beginning- when did you arrive at the construction site?”

“Oh, around 9pm I think, maybe later- to be honest, it’s all a bit of a blur,” Her voice was airy, almost painfully so, “I was downtown with my friends when I smelled the smoke-”

“And then?”

“I heard thunderclap after thunderclap- i knew then what was happening,” _Had she rehearsed this?_ “The Soldier of Heaven was fighting crime-” _She’d definitely rehearsed this._ “Naturally, i just needed to get a better look at what was going on, curiosity is such a curse, Cas, I’m sure you understand.”

Castiel kept nodding along. “Absolutely...”A bit of static electricity prickled on the back of his neck as he pictured the building as it had been when he flew in. Dead quiet and dark. Right up until the moment it wasn’t.

“So I followed the smoke and the building was completely- well, it was almost robed with flames,” Becky stared off into the distance, quite a feat considering the size of the interview cubicle, “And i could hear screaming from inside, even over the roaring of the fire i could hear it- all this crashing, shouting-”

For a second, Castiel felt the screams on his throat again, along with the smell of his feathers burning. More static prickled along his spine. “How long did that go on for?”

“Don’t know-”, She closed her eyes and pursed her lips like she was trying to haul back some distant memory, “It was so fast, Cas, before i knew it, the fight was done and the bad guys were gone- streaking through the night sky like a comet.” A dramatic pause that was definitely intended as a dramatic pause, “But then-” She opened her eyes, they watered up quickly with crocodile tears, “Then it happened.”

Castiel blinked and Dean’s devil-like silhouette against the fire flashed there briefly, then his soot streaked face as he knelt over him when he’d woken from death. He left the scene behind his eyelids and returned to Becky. He twirled the pen again and a line of sparks rippled down the inside of his spine.“What happened?”

A flash of excitement gleamed behind her teary guise. A glint of sharp claws. “He, the Black Impala-“ First, Cas, he was just a shadow sliding out of the window and then he was there with the Soldier lying beneath him, wings spread out and dark as the road-” She dabbed at the false tears starting to roll down her cheeks, “Impala grabbed at him- clung to his chest and he- he” A tremoring breath that made Castiel frown, “He kissed him.”

All the air in Castiel’s chest shot up to his throat and wedged itself there like a cinder-block.

_What._

Becky, being pulled along by her own train of a lie at breakneck speed, failed to notice Castiel’s impression of a deer in the headlights. “It’s unbelievable, I know- but he kissed him and-”

_That’s not-_

“It was the most passionate kiss I’ve ever seen- so desperate and starved; I mean the Black Impala’s hands were all over the Soldier-” 

_He didn’t-_

The smell of flowers and the cool of Dean’s lips on his neck played for a second on Castiel’s senses to remind him that yes, he did.

The cinder block dislodged an inch and let Castiel breathe a bit.

_Well he didn’t kiss me on the road right after the fire, anyway._

Castiel cleared his throat and wrestled his vocal chords into action with great difficulty. “Are you sure?”

Becky’s brow creased and her words got caught for a second like she hadn’t expected any doubt. “Are you-” She squinted at him, wiping away the tears on her cheeks and sniffing rather louder than she needed to, “Cas, I know what I saw.”

“Just routine, Becky-” Castiel looked down at his notepad to avoid looking into her eyes. He thought briefly back to Dean's near fear in the office before. He knew he'd applied CPR and knew it would be misinterpreted. Hence the mile deep worry lines. “Is there any possibility at all that what you saw was-say-CPR?” Dean aside, he was diving into the deep-end suggesting anything other than what Becky thought, “They had been in a burning building, the Soldier of Heaven may have been asphyxiated by the smoke-?”

“I know the difference between mouth to mouth and making out, Cas, and this was definitely the latter.” She pursed her lips, obviously a tell, “And before they disappeared into the night, I heard the Black Impala say ‘I need you, baby, just hang on’”

_...Really?_

He scribbled some notes in handwriting a bit loopier and more erratic than his usual, his stomach felt like it was filling up with sand. These kinds of rumours were never good. “Did you catch anything else?”

“No, they just embraced and then they were gone,” Rosen shook her head a fraction, the dry tear streaks on her cheeks reflected the light in an almost sinister way. “I wish i knew where they went-”

“Don’t we all?” Castiel faked a smile and put down his pen, giving Rosen what he hoped was a friendly look, “Becky, i think I have everything I need here-”

She stood, her hair rolling back and tapping against the door. “Fantastic” She grinned and offered a hand to shake.

Forgetting the buzzing feeling of nervous static prickling over his skin, Castiel squeezed it.

Rosen flinched.

Castiel’s eyes widened.

_Oh._

_No._

His mouth drained of moisture and his heart had gone awol but he forced a quarter of a laugh “Sorry-” Castiel pointed at the arm of his suit, mind scrambling to grab a convincing lie to present, “Polyester and dry air don’t mix well”

Becky’s responsive laugh was a bit delayed. It was hard to tell whether she believed him. “Right- of course-” She flicked her hair off her shoulder, “I look forward to the article, Cassy.”

He waved as she left the room and dropped his head in his hands as soon as the door closed behind her, smile gone entirely with a long, exasperated sigh.

His body felt heavy but hummed with his blood’s electric pulse, his wings ached, his throat felt narrow and all of this reflected the one solitary thought (or fact, rather) resounding in Castiel’s head.

_We’re so screwed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear god how many months late is this?
> 
> ???
> 
> I actually have no idea but I am so sorry; I've just been stuck on this one for eons now (this is either the third or fourth rewrite of this chapter, and no, I'm not kidding), hence the wait. 
> 
> That and i don't write so fast when marathon-ing Supernatural until 4:30 in the morning (preparing my brain for trivia at the con because i make good life choices)
> 
> As always- if you liked it, have any questions or noticed any typos, please leave a comment! Those things are my life-blood <3 Also, i won't make any promises, but my next update shouldn't be as ridiculously late as this one was (though school starts up again next week so yeah, I'll probably be spending my free time stress crying instead of writing, let's be real here.)


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